


Evil Space Wizards

by Hercules_GritPype_Thynne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Mutant Rights, Mutants, Obscurus (Harry Potter), Paranormal Investigators, Wand lore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-05-20 20:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19383754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hercules_GritPype_Thynne/pseuds/Hercules_GritPype_Thynne
Summary: The boy-who-lived is attending his earlier years at Hogwarts, as we all know, being an impromptu hero thwarting spectres and blood purists. Meanwhile, a mutant in an offshoot of the french secret service finds an odd-looking piece of wood in an abandoned rural mansion...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I make no claim of ownership to the universes this is set in. Only the main character(s).

Stone does not warp. If you hit it hard enough it will crack, and perhaps shatter. If you leave it long enough it will turn to sand. If you heat it long enough, it will melt and liquefy. But you can never bend it. So I thought until I was asked to visit Saulxures.

In Saulxures there is a very old and very dead château. 'Château' is a french word which translates as "castle", but not every château is a castle. The place I went to investigate was basically an enormous and (formerly) beautiful house for rural aristocrats, with a good acre or more of property.

The only warning of what I would see was an envelope of the only existing photos available of the place. They didn't show anything special, merely a few shots in black and white from when it was intact, and a few from after it was abandoned. I know what long-neglected buildings look like, having made it my business to hunt down and conquer them as a small child. With the photos came a note reading "expect much worse than shown." I did ask Geoffrey, who officially assigned me the case, what this could mean, but he didn't know. It turns out I only got the job because someone else backed out at the last minute. I was the next agent not currently engaged.

In any case, by 'much worse' I expected to see what I usually see: mysterious explosions, profuse quantities of blood with no source, the odd piece of unnecessarily complicated and dangerous technology someone that forgot to deactivate, or some anomaly like that. I didn't think I would face a violation of physical laws, or at least not this one, relating to stone. I could stomach telekinesis because it's a fact of my existence, and I could stomach someone being able to 'control magnetism', for instance, because there were and are hours and hours of footage showing Erik Lehnsherr's prodigious exploits, and I don't have the time, the energy or the skill to go through them and pick out the forgeries. However, no one even whispered to me that you could bend stone until I went to see that château in person, so I wasn't ready for it. If I could get emotionally invested in an abstract concept to the point of a truly visceral reaction to its nullification I would have vomited the moment I stepped out of my car. Instead I merely dropped my jaw, my portable phone, my notebook and pencil, and my umbrella. This was terrible, because I usually carry all of those items (minus my jaw) using my telekinetic power, at eye level height. My phone smashed and died, my pencil lost its head, my notebook soaked up all the rain out of the ground, and my umbrella landed directly on my head and stayed there. I had long ago removed the useless handle, you see, so now I looked like I was wearing a poor imitation of a Chinese paddy hat.

The château de Saulxures had warped. It had done many impossible things, but that is what you saw first when looking at it. It looked as though it had suffered some sort of implosion and yielded. If you can imagine what would happen if you had an empty can of coca-cola and sucked all the air out, that is what the château appeared to have gone through. Not one stone, not one lump of rock or otherwise solid and unyielding material had been displaced that hadn't obviously fallen out long before the incident. If there was a fabric to reality, and the material world was the pattern on that fabric, it was as if there had been an inward stretching of space. The mere thought of that made me wary to go near the property. Bad things happen to living beings when space bends significantly. Still, I had a paying job, and sometimes that meant nearly dying. I had a variety of other problems in my life which resulted in me nearly dying regularly, so it wasn't so bad to have that as part of my employment.

The owner arrived just in time to see me picking up my bits and pieces. Without a word he watched them float in the air, my rear car window roll down, and the debris fly inside and clatter to their final doom on the floor. I couldn't say whether he was particularly surprised or mildly distracted. In any case hysteria was never common in these parts. The really scary monsters, even if birthed here, generally didn't stay. If you wanted to join one of the two movements struggling to decide which genocide was preferable, you went overseas, far from the small folk.

Very slowly, the owner held out his hand. I think he half-expected me to shake it without actually touching. Instead, I stepped closer and took his frail sack of digits in mine, physically. Somehow, his petrified features relaxed, the simple gesture reassuring him.

"Ms Delamare, isn't it?"

"That's right," I said, "and you must be Eugene de Fleurville?"

He didn't respond, merely looked me up and down, as many do. Perhaps I was the first mutant he had encountered and he wanted to see some visual indication of my condition. My coat betrayed nothing of me, not that there was anything to see underneath. I look entirely human.

Making eye contact again, he jerked his hairless bonce at the house. "Shocking, isn't it?" I nodded under my impromptu paddy hat. The jerky motion caused it to fall forward in front of my face, as I still wasn't holding it except with my head. In my mind, if that stony face was going to break at all, that was the moment, in hilarity. There was no evidence of that when I levelled my hat, yet I blushed uncontrollably.

As he unlocked the gate I discarded the umbrella. I could have simply resumed making it hover above, but its image was spoilt to me now. The very thought of it would redden my cheeks forever after. I had been seen with a ratty canvas paddy hat, and preferred to let my curls plaster and straighten on my cheeks than allow anyone to relish the sight again. In any case, if I needed a better excuse than shame, the rough landing had caused buckling to the spokes. It was an old thing, and my forceful modifications to accomodate my power had not helped its longevity.

The old man led me across the lawn explaining to me what was already clear from the photos, beside the warping phenomenon. The jungle was gone, the grass growing neatly and consistently. Trees which had fallen or grown forks from injuries were now taller and straighter than they'd ever been. A forest manager would have been jealous. The surrounding stone wall was free of years' worth of moss, and statues throughout the garden were devoid of even the slightest age or accident-related blemish. The entire property, including the main house with its morphological insult to Physics, had been restored to a better state of upkeep than it was ever recorded in.

Yet the place was no more habitable than when the only substantial obstacle to occupation was the sheer cost of living in it. In halfway decent shape, you could have bought it for next to nothing, but you would never find a local income big enough even to heat half the rooms in the winter. North-eastern France is woefully depressed. It's because there are so few people up here that it is surprising when a mutant doesn't cause a strong reaction. Although in this case I suppose there was easily enough weirdness that you wouldn't bat an eyelid at a mere telekinetic. If my partly foreign heritage was more visible, there would be a mystery. My family abroad always winge about my growing up and living far away from everything, but it does serve that I sound like I belong here.

"Have you tried going inside since the incident?" I asked as we approached the front door. I didn't want to meet any further terrors without warning. Unfortunately he shook his head.

His key fit the lock, but only turned once. At first I thought, nearly hoped that the mechanism itself had changed shape just enough to not be able to open anymore. It turned out the door simply wasn't locked. The wood itself had visibly warped, being a much larger object. The curve was just enough so the hinges wouldn't allow it to open fully, but it was enough to get through. De Fleurville led the way.

Now, I had never been in a château before. I sneaked into the ruins of a couple when I was young and stupid, and I know all about the upkeep problems from various folk around me who had the misfortune of inheriting one. But I still knew too little to recognize what on earth most of the rooms were apart from barely recognizable kitchens and bedrooms. I remember there was a lot of very pretty and fairly useless-looking furniture. I might have asked my guide for vocabulary, as he appeared to be very strongly affected emotionally by all this stuff - quite a novel phenomenon on his countenance. He wouldn't have seen its like for decades. I was busy getting riled up at the constant affront on my beliefs. In spite of living in a world full of people like me, I remained stubbornly attached to those truths I thought stable. Every new X-man or woman I met or heard of, and every cosmic scale event that I couldn't shield my eyes and ears from was a piece of my childhood-old investment in the knowledge and method of science chipped away. And yet, as a mutant, I investigate strange and unusual occurrences for a living.

After a fruitless and frankly boring tour of all the superfluous and uninhabited space in the warped stone house, during which we found no bodies, no blood, no dead or living animals, and no alien spaceships, we ventured into a little inner courtyard, where the centre of the implosion appeared to be. This would have been a fairly substantial void with a clear opening to the sky up above, but with the inward pull, the crooked walls blocked out most of the light. I was about done with the place, and so did not pay it so much attention as I should have. It was the owner who spotted the first sign of strangeness other than the obvious.

"There's a pentagram on the floor," he said. I looked down, and there it was indeed, in phosphorescent paint. At least, I assumed it was phosphorescent. Just because it glowed white and not green was not enough for me to even consider some more magical nonsense.

"Yes there is," I said, stepping closer, feigning interest. I had already written the case off as an unsolvable. I would still get a few francs for the paperwork. "I wonder why."

"And you almost stepped on a magic wand."He went to his knees faster than I could protest, and came up with a delicate object fitting that description nicely. There was a handle, and a tapered spire, with a bend of 30 to 40 degrees at the join. The old man very gently handed me the wand, as if giving it credence as some legitimate agent of sorcery. Abandoning all hope of doing the forensics properly, I allowed myself to wonder whether the curve was by design or a result of all the other curving. Thankfully there were no other fancy items lying around.

I struggled to hide my enthusiasm in leaving the grounds. That I was going to have to take a special item to the lab for fingerprints and the odd test to see if it had exotic properties likely kept me from jumping for joy at being able to flee. The rain flattening my hair and destroying the precious little makeup I had bothered to apply certainly no longer bothered me.

"Is that it?" asked the owner as I approached my car and opened the door from ten feet away. I turned and told him the usual drivel.

"Don't let anybody in without confirmation from me or my boss. Don't go in yourself. If the whole thing goes boom or something let us know quick as you can. And don't brag to anyone about your fabulous new uninhabitable  _demeure_. You live in the middle of nowhere; don't make it harder for us than we have the funds to deal with. If I have to speak to a single bureaucrat above me, I will have to hunt you down and get you and every last person in this and neighbouring communes to sign a vow of silence on pain of death."

On balance he took his instructions well. He only showed a little panic when I told him what sort of things the authorities might have to do. He was after all quite old. In his mind he must have had little to lose. Though I would have liked to see the moment of realisation, which was surely coming, that he and everyone he knew had probably already been subjected to the kind of procedures I implied. When we parted ways he thanked me for my time, which was nice. Pay is all right, validation is better, especially from the folk on the ground.

I got inside my dear vintage deudeuche (2CV) and she leisurely drove me away toward HQ. I say she drove me because that's what it looked like. I had excised the driver's side back seat to allow room for mine to recline more than it was originally meant to, and was able to drive the car like that, not touching the steering wheel or the pedals, not even turning the key in the ignition. At one time I wanted to contrive a system where none of all the traditional driving tools would even be in the car anymore, so that I could directly get the fuel spraying and nudge the steering and change all the gears etc. But the mechanic who I originally asked to make the appropriate mods said it would be an assault on the poor little car. I never had the heart to do anything more after that. I almost regretted removing that rear passenger seat.

Since my phone was dead and it was pissing down, I had an excuse not to call in my having completed the first phase of my assignment. I drove straight home, enjoying the countryside (what I could see through the rainy veil at least), and letting all the nonsense of the morning drain from my mind, the so-called 'magic wand' completely forgotten, dumped on the seat beside me, an innocuous piece of polished wood.

Damn fool I was.


	2. Chapter 2

Home was a good hour away north and just barely out of the Vosges, so I had plenty of time to contemplate how I would spend the rest of the morning. I had to feed and set loose my old goose and my hens. I had to find a name for the south-american water rat living in the stream beside my house. And after those simple pleasures I’d get through my boring paperwork with a cup of tea for consolation. I’d have to find a new pencil, a new notebook, and order another mobile phone. And I’d have to find a box of the right awkward shape and size to hold the magic wand. However, none of that came to pass. I nearly died.

I felt it coming on just as I turned from the main road and drove onto the path where the railroad used to be. When I pulled up in front of my repurposed signal box I was driving the car with my hands and feet, as every treacherous pothole she passed over threatened to break my calm, and keeping an iron grip on the wheel helped ground me. I dried up my concentration in delicately opening my car and exiting without harming her, before blowing in my own front door and rushing inside. I rampaged through my house until I found my pills, swallowed them raw, and immediately hurried over to the phone.

“But you already had your break this month!” Geoffrey protested, “I haven’t even looked at the next available safe zones...”

“This isn’t negotiable.” I said, “I don’t know why I’m stirring, but I am. And this is a big one. I’ve already broken my favourite mug – again.”

He was silent. Then, “This is serious.” he ceded, “Have you set fire to anything..?”

“I’m trying not to look at my filing cabinet.” I spat through gritted teeth “Don’t put evil notions in my head.” I needed to find somewhere else to plug-in my home phone. It was no good on the desk where I was surrounded by important stuff. “Find me a place to go now, now because my mobile’s dead. I can’t afford to wait.”

I heard shuffling and the sound of papers being swept of a table, then the hammering of frantic typing on a computer keyboard. 

“You’re back from Saulxures then?” he said, “Well, the only spot available is a parcel of woodland in the mass just south-west of the village.”

“You’re joking. Woodland?”

“Yes. I’m faxing you the exact location now. It’s been untended for decades, no one will notice or care.”

“And how am I supposed to get there on time? You don’t already have official clearance for transmat use do you?”

Dismissal was clear in his voice; I could see him waving at the air as he responded, “There’s no point waiting for that. Just do what you need to do and we’ll sort out the signatures later.”

“Right, well, I’ll need a new battery afterwards. She’ll not likely handle the abuse again so soon after last time.

“I’m drafting the commission now,” he answered, the hammering starting anew, “Get better soon, Marie. I can’t have all my boys and girls calling in sick, dead or volatile every day. That makes four cases put on hold because the agent assigned got into trouble after taking the job.”

“Who else has bitten it?”

“Françoise has the venutian flu, Michel broke a leg, and the idiot who Mr de Fleurville originally called about the château got a summons from up top.”

“What for?”

Geoffrey snorted. “Who knows? He’s a bad egg. I’ll spare you the details, though. If you want to hear a story then actually come to the office with your report when you’re fit again. It’s sad to get everything by mail.”

“Fine. Thanks Geoffrey. See you soon.”

“Take care.” he said, and hung up.

I dropped the receiver and ran from my own home, pausing only to grab the slip of paper protruding from my spluttering printer. I left the door gaping open, I didn’t release my poor birds, and I didn’t even glimpse my coypu neighbour. My dear deuche’s door flew open for me; I jumped inside, and pummelled the coordinates of Sauxlures into the matter transporter bolted onto the passenger-side airbag. The next instant I was revving the engine up, and set out from where I had landed in the village, passing right by the warped mansion, and made for the forest.

The road rapidly turned to white paths, and again the strain on my car’s suspension played havoc with my composure, my knuckles turning white from squeezing the wheel. Behind me I felt, saw and heard the first signs of damage in my wake, twigs, dead limbs and branches, ill trees, every weakest extremity of the surrounding wood snapped and littered the path. When I arrived at my destination there were eddies of dust kicking up and tailing me and my car, and every few seconds there would be a loud crack from nearby, standing out over the endless whine and creaking of slowly bending trunks. 

I leap out of my car and bounded into the woodland. The terrain was uneven, mounds of earth and remains of fallen trees indistinguishable unless I passed over them and they were torn out of the ground. The trees were badly mixed together, badly spaced; spruce clustered here, fir there, forked and disease-ridden Douglas the only evidence of what the original planters would have wanted to grow here. Nothing had ever been pruned, and dead branches long devoid of leaves or spines were among the first to burst to smithereens as I neared them.

At last I was ready, a little out of breath, drenched from the still-pouring rain, and suitably surrounded on all sides by deep, dark forest, blocking most of what little light the sun was able to smuggle through the clouds. I settled down cross-legged on a huge fallen trunk, shut my eyes, and quit holding back. I stayed aware just long enough to hear the ripping tear of lightning strike its first unsuspecting victim into a thousand splinters, and feel the wind blow my hair off my cheeks where water had glued it there. From there, I slept, and let the storm do its business without me.

* * *

I had one thoroughly destroyed tire, but that was only one of several anomalies. The first I knew the moment I woke up, even before opening my eyes: I was still sitting lotus on the side of a dead tree trunk, as if nothing had happened to disturb me. Then there was the amount of carnage wreaked upon my surroundings, or lack thereof. Although there was evidence of lightning strikes and other destructive forces, I was still surrounded by live trees. That said, the forest was no more recognizably itself than any of my allocated safe-zones after my visits.

The wood looked as though it had been wild and untouched for centuries, defying me to name a time when it had submitted to human control. When I arrived, the oldest specimens were thin, light-starved and miserable little shows of stunted growth; now, almost every plant towered hundreds of feet into the sky, trunks wider than the fattest wine barrel with bark peeling in scales the size of my hand. High up above, the foliage blocked out the sky so well I couldn’t see whether it was still stormy or just cloudy. All I could see through that roof of branches was where the light was least dim, directly over me. It must be midday.

The real mystery was the passage of time. After I changed my deudeuche’s slashed-up wheel I checked the small mechanical clock I had taped to the side of the transmat device, to see what hour the spring had run out. The clock was still going, reading quarter to twelve. Unless the damn thing had been rewound in the evening while I was here, it was still Wednesday, and mere hours had passed.

My heart missed a beat, and I ran back into the forest, leapt onto my perch and shut my eyes again, waiting for all hell to break loose. Nothing happened. Around me trunks groaned from the gentle breeze nudging their upper branches, and far above their millions of leaves rustled in the wind. It was a novel experience, alone in this impossible fantasy land with only my confused thoughts for company. As it lasted so and no storm came, I let myself wander for a while.

It occurred to me sometime later I was meditating, properly. I was consciously doing what everyone at Xavier’s school was banging on about all the time. I was up there one year when I was young and my powers were blooming. One year was all my family could afford between the cost of travel and the cost of living across the pond, and the cost of attending the school. Jean Grey tutored me for a time, as she thought we shared the same abilities, the same potential. Xavier taught me all about meditation because he thought it would help contain the all-destroying monster within, which ultimately it did, although I was never conscious during my sessions. Jean on the other hand tried to have me redirect that force and use it to bolster my existing gift of telekinesis. She thought the two entities were linked, and if I could feed one to the other I would reach her strength. It was never meant to be, and her zeal cost me a very temperamental spinal column. I was never going to meet the goals she set me, and we both discovered my upper limit the hard way. I was almost glad to leave when my parents’ money ran dry.

At present, I was fully conscious, so I decided to try some of the exercises I was much advised to do in this state, or at least what I remembered them to be. I didn’t try not to think, as that is simply impossible. Not all thoughts inside your head are quite yours, and to try and block merely gives them more substance. Instead I tried to simply let my thoughts go, let them happen, let them lead me. 


	3. Chapter 3

Want of home broke my focus after a solid half hour, and I left the trunk for the final time. I discovered two things when upon returning to my car. One was an insurmountable disaster, and the other merely a new sensation. First, there was a felled tree, a very big one, lying across the road that led out of this place. It was easily too big and heavy for me to handle. Meanwhile, still sitting on the passenger seat, the phony toy wand was calling to me. I don’t know how else to phrase it; it wanted to be used.

There was no harm, I thought, in waving a strange stick and speaking a few meaningless words at an inert lump of timbre. I could do it repeatedly and knowing it was in vain. But the rage would be spent and a true solution sprout thereafter. Walking toward the dead tree, I made the passenger window roll down and pulled the crooked little stick my way.

The wand felt different to me, as I made it float out of the car. The wood was warm, the heat somehow reaching me through the immaterial manifestation of my will. I dismissed this in the moment and did not abort what I intended to be a mildly cathartic, theatrical and harmless stunt. I raised my leading hand in the air, thought of some syllables, and when the wand arrived between my fingers I thrust it at the offending trunk shouting a string of incomprehensible half-words conjured from blurry memories of my foreign language classes at school.

There was an ear-splitting crack as if a thunderbolt exploded right before me, and there was so much light I think you could have seen my skeleton through my skin. My eyelids certainly failed to block it. I was thrown high in the air backwards, skidding to a halt on the other side of my car, just short of the bonnet. I lay dazed down there for a long time, waiting for my back to start hurting. Only when I looked, and saw how close I’d been to bouncing off the deuche itself did the pain come, although it was mostly imaginary.

The wand was intact, and had never left my hand. The trunk across the path however, was more or less gone. There were two large lumps on either side of the road, but the middle was all splinters, dust, and the odd fist-sized fragment. A small exertion later, and all of those small bits were gone. Obstacle eliminated, the path was usable again.

I didn’t start driving right away; just lay back in the driver’s seat staring at the roof. It really wasn’t my day. Though my job frequently had me butt up against events that I wished were impossible, never had it served them up in one big salvo. Apparently you could bend stone. Apparently there was magic and magic wands to wield it. Forests could be made to age centuries’ worth in the space of a few hours. If this weren’t some delusion, then the wider world would soon show me further evidence. I didn’t want that, didn’t want to move anymore. For now, I was safe, and could pretend this was a terrible dream.

The endless ticking of my clock is what set me in motion at last. Usually when I used to emerge from my breaks the device would have wound itself down and the car would be silent. Here, the constant knocking and clicking was like a nudge, someone pushing me on, telling me I had business to attend to. As I got my engine going and turned the car around, I recalled Geoffrey wanting me to get better soon. I wasn’t sure about being better, but I wasn’t volatile anymore, and I needed pay. I set out for home once again.

* * *

Getting home and seeing the sorry state of my front door, and the total lack of activity on my land, I was glad to set aside all thoughts of the morning’s nonsense and rushed to get done what I had been compelled to neglect. The old goose honked loud and flapped its wings at me when I let it outside, and the chickens kicked up a dust storm as they ran out of their house and out of their gravelly enclosure to go dig for worms in the grassy bit beside the stream. With the birds freed I fetched some carrots and went prospecting along the bank. I didn’t see my water rat, but I left him my offering. If they were gone when I returned I could rest my heart.

In the meantime, I had to make a phone call. I took a painkiller as my abuse of my spine was beginning to have its repercussions. I brewed tea at last, and sat in the garden sipping it with my beasts running around me for a few minutes, and then went inside to business. My home phone was where I left it, unhooked, and probably in need of being recharged. It should still have enough juice to patch me through to Geoffrey.

“How’s it?”

“Marie?” he gasped, “What are you doing near a phone? There are no phones in the woods...”

“I’m home and fine.” I said, “Don’t ask me how; it was just very quick today. Perhaps the monster knows it shouldn’t even be awake in the first place. Can you strike me from the sick list and clear me for transmat to Paris for tomorrow? And you better send me that battery by tonight. I have a thing for the lab – from the château.”

“You’ll have to drive your old bucket if you’re going. We should have had a plan for your thing happening out of turn. I never got clearance for your first jump, and when I spoke to top brass they said they weren’t even sure about that forest in Saulxures. We’re in the shit right now.”

I took a moment to process that. Then I asked “What does ‘not sure about that forest’ mean?”

Geoffrey sighed. “It means it wasn’t necessarily ready for you. There may or may not have been a working cloaking device installed under the village, so it’s possible that people looking at the hill would have seen... whatever show you usually give.”

“How do you not know whether there’s a damn cloak or not? Don’t they keep records in great big neat files with lots of reference numbers and such?”

“Apparently it might be an old faulty model. Maybe records got lost during the last war or something. There’s always a loose cog somewhere. If we’d had the time, or some sort of protocol for when you go off without warning, this could have been averted. The two of us already have official convocations for a meeting with higher-ups next week. I printed them this morning and was going to mail you yours to read Saturday or Sunday.”

“Hm. So we got it in the arse, eh?”

“Like I said.”

Neither of us spoke for a bit. Then he asked “What is it you want to bring to the lab?”

* * *

I drove along the path where the railroad used to be for several miles, until I reached the ruins of a signal box. This one hadn’t been restored and made into a regular house like mine, merely left alone to fall to bits at its own leisure. It was completely lost in the middle of nowhere. Aside from farmers tending the fields all around, I was the only person to frequently visit this place. I used it for target practice. Usually I would bring a bow and some rock slings with a pile of pebbles from the river. I also had a crossbow, but that wasn’t strictly legal.

It was the afternoon, and after fully recovering from the events of the morning, I had come here with the magic wand. While I couldn’t see it without seeing anymore, it had preserved its presence, always on the edge of my awareness whether I was looking at it or not. It never ceased talking to me.

Geoffrey, perhaps understandably, admonished against further use of the device. Any other day, I might have willingly censored it. If all the morning had thrown me were warping stone, a pentagram, and a magic wand, phoney or not, I might have heeded his advice. I had already encountered artefacts endowed with more power than thermodynamics should allow, and my custom was to pretend they didn’t exist. Sometimes I couldn’t immediately hand them over to my higher-ups, and they had to stay in my care. When that happened, I occupied myself in some faraway location, leaving the offending objects in my house, in a cardboard box, on a high shelf, or in a cupboard beneath the stairs. It’d never gone horribly wrong so far. If someone stole it from me, I saw that as a win. If I can’t keep the dodgy items under my roof, then let the secret service deal with them. This time though, habit was not enough. By now I thought there must be a link between my aborted outbreak and the wand. It was personal.

It was raining just a little as I stepped out of my car and walked toward my faraway location with my dodgy item. Barely ten paces out I stopped and reached behind me to rummage around the back of the car. My umbrella flew out to me and deployed so hard I worried I might break it. No one could see me, and the sole person to have seen the paddy hat lived ages away. There wasn’t much water falling now, but I’d had my share.

I looked upon one of four patchy walls that had once been the signal box. When I first visited the place you could still see bits of the original coat of render peeling off, but my assaults over the years quickly wore it off. I knocked the very last plaque of it to pieces with a crossbow bolt. Given its performance with stubborn timbre, I expected similar carnage from the little delicately crooked stick.

Starting things gently, I focused my attention on a small fissure in one of the many exposed building blocks, and did what I thought to be a miniaturised version of whatever I did facing the fallen tree. Nothing much happened. I repeated several times, varying the flavour of meaningless language spoken, even tried not speaking at all. A half-conscious wordless flick of the tip sent a tiny green light into the air, dancing a bit before going out. I stared at the wall, the patter of the rain and the endless drip of larger droplets from the spokes of my umbrella beginning to wear on my nerves. I hadn’t brought my other weapons, only this piece of polished wood. It had served me earlier, now it was only good for pretty sparks. 

Out of frustration I nearly snapped the wand in half. Given time to mull through my feelings, I would have killed the urge because that would be interfering with evidence in an investigation. As it happened, I was distracted by a shimmering blue deer.

The doe cocked its head to one side when I turned around to see it, floating ten feet in the air. It must have expected me to be utterly oblivious to the crackle in the air and the sudden flash of pale light reflected in the falling water. We stared at each other a long while, until the wind started blowing rain in my eyes. I blinked once and the creature was gone.

I didn’t tell Geoffrey what I saw. That was a mistake. Instead, after driving home with my attempts to reproduce my earlier exploit all fruitless, I went through my evening routine as if nothing special had happened. I wrote my official report on the current progress of the De Fleurville/Saulxures case, copied one for myself, and put the other in an envelope to be mailed the following day. I did call to see if I had transmat clearance to get to Paris, and that being the case, to try and speed up the procuring of a new battery for my car, as the next trip would surely kill it. Unfortunately there had been no change; Geoffrey still couldn’t obtain clearance, and the commission for a power cell hadn’t been answered. I was going to have to drive all the way to Paris in my ‘old bucket’ as he called it.

Before the light faded I went outside to put away my birds, and walked along the stream to see what had become of the carrots. The coypu had taken them, and as I arrived on the spot, he turned up to greet me, likely hoping for more.

“That was the last of them, Piggy.” I told him.

* * *

I set out around five in the morning. This would easily be a three to four hour drive, and promised to be about the most tiring one in months, and I had no intention of taking the highways. Besides my hatred of péages, being amongst hundreds of vehicles moving at high speed is simply too much. I can feel them all around me, and that awareness gnaws at my concentration.. 

Roughly three quarters of an hour into the journey, I ran low on fuel. Fortunately I was yet to venture completely out of the areas I knew well. I stumbled onto Saint Dizier and just managed to find a gas station in time for the deuche to splutter and fall asleep. I had to push it the last metre or so, but that wasn’t so bad. Mixing human strength and telekinesis works wonders when the mass you’re pushing has wheels, unlike a giant bale of hay. When I was done, my back only ached a little.

I leaned my physical body against a pillar supporting the roof of the fuelling terminal, while my invisible hands got on with the work. I pretended it wasn’t me doing it, imagined myself walking on the scene and seeing this empty 2CV and the fuel tubes sliding out of their holsters and feeding into the car all on their own. Even playing this little game in my head it didn’t disrupt the process. It was as if there was some third party at play, some entity that dealt with some of the lower level coordination for specific tasks, letting me think freely on top. It only ever worked with the telekinesis. It’s why I can carry so many odd bits literally floating about my person. Once I formulate what I want of them they sort of follow me around. 

When I thought the tank was full I stopped injecting, and checked the meter. I was bang on as always. I manually put the tube away, manually closed the fuel hatch in the car, and manually paid. It was still very dark out, the sky utterly black with not a single star poking through the veil of cloud, but I liked it – under a nice woollen coat with a big woollen hood and woollen gloves, of course. The stillness made a change from yesterday’s torment both mental and physical. No rain, no wind, no elements fundamentally misbehaving, and no screwy artefacts inconsistently making merry hell of reality, just a fuel station. Then, out of nowhere, three men appeared in front of me, brandishing magic wands. 


	4. Chapter 4

I backed away slowly, moving away from my car and into an open space. Ahead were the three leather clad figures with their pointy sticks. To one side of me was the fuel terminal, and opposite was the empty car park of a small-town supermarket. I took baby steps backwards trying to work out what was behind me.

“What do you want of me?” I asked, still backing up. One of the trio’s hats twitched.

“To contain you.” one of them said. It was dark, and the roof of the terminal shielded them from any lampposts’ light, so I couldn’t tell which had spoken.

“Contain me?” I asked, “Aren’t you late?” I thought of my first violent outbursts when I was younger. “I haven’t harmed anyone for seventeen years.”

“You killed six people yesterday alone.” one of the shapes retorted, “And then you went playing in the woods. I guess it must have got hard to hold it in so long.”

“Or she’s just a late bloomer.” another one spat, “Borderline squib.” and seeing me continue to creep further back told me “Don’t run, we’re doing you a favour.”

I ignored him, silently rejoicing as I recognized what the stack of objects behind me must be. “You plan to kill me then?” I said to the one furthest left of me. His trilby drooped apologetically.

“What would you have us make of an obsc-“

Just as he started speaking I found what I was looking for and hurled it square at his face: an empty gas bottle. There were hundreds piled up behind me, but they were too heavy when full, and set in a sort of metal rig. The one I launched was from the ones people had brought back here after using up the contents. It hit the man with devastating accuracy, although his skull was hard enough to draw a loud clang out of the steel bubble. His head took him flying backwards, skidding to a halt several feet away and quite unconscious.

My two remaining opponents made the mistake of having perfectly normal reactions, gaping after their fallen comrade. I wrenched both their pretty twigs from their fingers, brought them to my physical hands and snapped them in half. The flash of dying sparks from the dying wands revealed to me their appalled faces even as they jumped to action. As I hunched over and started plotting my next attack they began slowly circling me, and slivers of white light escaped from their splayed fingers. The gas bottle returned from its arc through the night and dived for the nearest unwelcome head. But the goon in question flicked his wrist, and my projectile dented itself against an invisible shield in the air, bouncing useless and hitting the ground as I released it. I leapt for cover behind the remaining unoccupied fuelling terminal in time to avoid being struck by a billowing cloud of sparkling purple streaks of energy. Before making my next move, I glanced at the ground where I had stood. The tarmac looked like it had been hit by a thousand tiny pick-axes.

I ran from my hiding place, and circled around the fuel station into the car park, and my enemies immediately gave chase. I reached out and felt around me, getting to know every nook and cranny of this little corner of the village. My back started hurting and I realized I was without cover. I stopped and turned around in time to be hit in the chest by some sort of blunt force, somewhat diluted by its caster’s maiming, but still easily enough to topple me. Still conspiring, and still running my invisible hands over every solid lump around, I stayed down as my would-be killers arrived on top of me.

“You’ve got skills, you do,” the one who’d blocked the bottle croaked, out of breath, “it’s a shame we’ve got to end you.” He jabbed his chin at me and told his partner “Hold her down.”

My body froze as an unseen weight was applied to it, forcing me flat on the ground, forcefully straightening my spine – there was no immediate pain. Unfortunately for the goon applying the force, there was no way he could restrain all of my limbs, as I had infinitely many non-corporeal ones. As he straightened up and prepared to help finish me off I unleashed every little object I had found, whether I recognized them or not, onto him and his unsuspecting colleague. First a flower pot hit him in the shin, and then it rained everything from plastic and metal dustbins to the odd glass window someone left open and easy to unhinge. Searing pain flared everywhere under my neck as I was awkwardly set loose, but I hurriedly crawled away just the same. Seconds later I ran out of things to pummel my pursuers with, and I propped myself up on one elbow to look back and appraise the situation. It looked as though only one hat was left standing. As I set in motion my last trick I distracted him with the remaining three intact bottles of gas in a sort of rotating sequence. Each one he blocked, dented and made bounce away was followed by one from another direction.

The poor fellow was far too late in hearing the sound of a ratty old engine screaming onto him from behind, and my faithful deuche sent him on a graceless somersault in the air. He landed with a bony crack, but an angry rasping cry of pain signalled he wasn’t quite down yet.

Stopping the car just short of driving past me, and still lying on the ground, I rummaged inside for my next weapon. The wand flew eagerly between my fingers. The wood was hot, as if burning to see action. Now I had my own delicate stick, I sent the car into full reverse, rear lights shining into the horrified features of the still-writhing goon before she ran him over.

I cut the engine, got to my feet on a very stiff frame, and surveyed the battle field. I released my mane of brown curls from under my hood, as it was getting hot under there. Around, all was quiet. A few metres away lay the trilby I had knocked down first. The light of stubbornly nearing dawn showed a dark stain against the dull grey around his head. My car had meant to kill, but not the gas bottle. That first punch shouldn’t have been fatal, I thought. I couldn’t imagine myself strong enough for that.

There was a grunt in the opposite direction and I looked to see the last of my enemies standing, the one who’d pinned me down for the other to execute me. He staggered towards me, rubbing his eyes and holding his forehead. He must have blacked out.

“Where did you get that?” he rasped, seeing the wand I was training on him. I had no idea what I was going to with it, but felt intuitively it would serve me this time. It was itching, nagging me to funnel power through it.

To my approaching foe I said “Wouldn’t you like to know?”, and fell into his trap he copied from me. For as I spoke a small object streaked through the air, its shine catching the fading glare of the street-lights, and settled in his outstretched hand. It was the first goon’s wand, the one I hadn’t destroyed.

My heart missed a beat as I realized my main advantage was gone. My opponent barked some precisely meaningless words and a fireball formed at the tip of his replacement twig, rolling towards me. My spine freezing and tensing more each second, I couldn’t run and couldn’t move away fast enough, so with no alternative I waved my own stick and just screamed at the coming flames with only the want of it not killing me clearly formulated. A flickering jade screen shot up in front of me for the ball to hit instead. I was still knocked to the ground by the impact, and the fall completely locked up my body from below the chest down, but I was yet to truly bite the dust.

“You bitch.” the man called limping towards me. He stopped just ten paces from me where I had fallen. I could see his expression clearly now. He was talking to himself more than to me. “I shouldn’t have to do this to dispose of a monster.”

He took a deep breath and levelled his wand at me. From having worked with and spoken to assassins in the past I knew what the dull void in his eye meant. I mirrored his pose from the ground as best I could, and concentrated. In my hand the stick positively throbbed with glee at what was to come. It yearned for a kill, regardless whether for malice or defence.

 “Avada Kedavra!” he shouted, and green fire snaked toward me. I met it with the last of my waning strength, channelling it through the hungry stick of wood in my fingers where it came out as a burning chaotic mess of red and orange streams. The collision of both attacks formed a shapeless mass of light, one moment showing my colours, the next veering to his.

I wasn’t going to win, and knew I wasn’t, yet I doggedly pulled on every last fibre within me. I held myself up off the ground half with my free hand, and half with my invisible limbs. At the same time as I channelled magic into the wand I outright pushed against my opponent with all the might my mutant power could muster. All of my energy I forced into my defence and the wand eagerly sucked it in, spewing forth its murderous passion staining the air with burning blood and fire.

The moment of reckoning came. The skilled sorcerer before me would not relent. In the next few moments my force would run dry and the lusting green snake would sink its fangs into me. Yet obstinately the crooked wand aggressively pulled my strength into its attack, refusing to let up, determined to end on the winning side. Well, it did. There was an awful crack like lightning and my hand was torn open as the wand shattered in my grip. The shifting ball of struggling colours bubbled uncontrollably and exploded, sending both me and my foe rolling and skidding away from each other. I hit my head on the ground and tasted blood in my mouth.

I opened my eyes on the sky, the shape and texture of the clouds visible now. I couldn’t move below the neck; the mere twitch of any muscle would flare agony unbearable. It would pass, that I was sure of. The question only remained whether it would the usual numbing and not-quite-healing or just death.

Standing over me, my reaper held up his wand, in not much better shape than mine, blackened and charred. “You’re doing _me_ a favour now.” he said, “I don’t think your soul splits from just smashing a monster’s face in.” He lifted a foot in the air over my head. I shut my eyes.

He never had a chance to bring it down.


	5. Chapter 5

My would-be assassin had his foot in the air. In a split second he would crush me dead with it. But in that tiny instant there was a painfully loud bang, and his chest erupted with buckshot. The blast sent him tumbling forward right over and clear of me. He would have been dead by the time he hit the ground. My last thought was the realization that a battle which had quickly escalated beyond the bounds of what I would have thought fantasy was cut short in a single shotgun round. I suppose it was spectacular in a way, how the bastard died, but it didn’t reflect the amount of grief he and the other two gave me. Had I not blacked out I might have pummelled the corpse for satisfaction.

* * *

I woke up in the front passenger seat of my car, re-evaluating my modifications of the vehicle’s insides. I was in excruciating pain from the neck down to the point I could hardly move a muscle. The weight of my body was resting on my spine in exactly the wrong way after so much abuse. I told myself if only I hadn’t removed one of the back seats there might e a way for me to lie down. That the 2CV was probably much too small, I deliberately brushed aside. I needed some justification to be angry, just to fuel the fight against the pain.

As bad as it was, I thought it should be worse. I remember how it felt when Grey’s final task nearly destroyed my back, trying to lift a bale of hay. I blacked out. Having never truly healed, the damage from the battle should have guaranteed prolonged unconsciousness, certainly when continually exacerbated by being in a moving car. When I opened my eyes, and they kept drooping shut like in early-morning French literature class, I concluded I must be high on painkillers.

“Ah, you’re awake again,” said the driver beside me. I couldn’t see nor feel her, partly due to the drugs numbing me, but mostly because my head was strapped to a headrest. That was odd. 2CV’s don’t usually have headrests.

“Remind me who you are,” is what I tried to say, but it came out as a wordless mumble. The person beside me must have expected it, because she responded as if she perfectly caught the meaning.

“It’s Françoise, of course. I filled your last Auror with pellets, remember?”

The strange word jogged my memory a little. I had already had this conversation with her, in the car, and each time she’d explained things to me which made little sense. I forced myself to articulate my next monosyllable. “Yes,” I said.

“Great. Maybe this time you can avoid nodding off half-way?”

“Yes,” I repeated, and added “You can skip the bit about Aurors and Obscurials.”

She was silent a few minutes as we went over a roundabout where there was a huge hole in the road that had been growing for months without repair. We were in that area around a town where the landscape is neither quite rural nor suburban. There are more complex intersections and more people, but not quite enough that the upkeep is especially consistent. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t pin down where she was taking me. Certainly we were no longer going remotely in the direction of Paris.

“Sorry, got to change the subject,” she said, “We’re nearing Bar, so you can pick your little grey cells later. Right now I need you to listen very carefully. I will say this only once.”

“I’m listening.”

“We’re going to my sister’s. She’s a wizard, she knows about you, and she’s agreed not to tell anyone. However, the person who will be putting your spine back together doesn’t know, and mustn’t. We need a cover story. Do you think you can keep your mouth shut?”

“Effortlessly,” I said, only too happy not to have to speak. Moving my face at all was slightly less painful than the constant buffeting and shaking imposed upon me by the car, but it had the added bite of being initiated by me, and thus in a way avoidable.

“Splendid, dear; although I do hope you’ll stay foggy enough not to get too angry at me too soon. Here’s the plan: first, do not – or I swear, I will finish you off myself – do not mention the hair...”

* * *

Once in Bar-le-Duc, Françoise took me to yet another place whose current condition defied the evidence of its previous dereliction, though not quite like Saulxures. It was near the canal and the church, right beside a big, more or less public car park. I knew that spot well, as the large open space had been the rendez-vous location for several school trips when I was at a Lycée in town. I used to stare at the ancient demeure there while waiting for the bus, trying to see through the huge unkempt trees at the building within, and longing to go and explore the walled-up jungle that was once a garden. If the entrance wasn’t right in front of the road for everyone to see I might have done it. Now, parked right in front of the gate, I was to be somehow brought inside, and the house was in the same impossibly prim and perfect state of care as the De Fleurville mansion had been.

My drug-induced drowsiness was fading, and with it the pain worsening; but because I was now stationary, I didn’t suffer much more. When Françoise waddled around the car to my side, and released the strap above my eyes, I had recovered enough of my innate power to levitate my head without use of the muscles. This didn’t escape her.

“As soon as you can, cut that out,” she said, “There must be no evidence of mutant ability in either of us.” With that, she went to the spiked metal gate, leaving the car open on my side. Set into the wall on the left were two buttons to ring the doorbell, one about four to five feet high and one significantly lower. Françoise used the latter.

The front door opened, and a woman stepped out who was the living image of the stereotypical peasant dwarf in fantasy novels. From outside the property I saw she was well-proportioned for her size, had fiery hair in two long braids, and was heavily freckled, wearing a plain earthy brown dress that went all the way to the ground. When she got closer, came through the gate and approached me alongside Françoise, I saw they were twins. Immediately, I wanted to ask which of the pair was wearing hair-dye, and whether it was black or red, but kept silent. I didn’t want to test my saviour’s last promise.

“This is Roxanne. Roxanne, this is Marie.”

The redhead came close and took my hand in hers. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs Delamare.” Smiling, she pulled a long thin stick of wood from a pocket in her dress, a magic wand. She pointed it at me, moved it an odd way and spoke some vaguely Latin-sounding words. Straight away some of my pain faded, as my weight was taken off my frame. She was making me float, like a balloon.

Still holding my hand, she said “A healer will join us shortly,” and pulled me from the car to her house. All the way through the gate, across her front garden, inside the building to her guest’s room, I didn’t touch anything solid beneath me until she lay me down on a comfy bed, propped up on several layers of cushions.

After Françoise joined us, having most likely stayed behind to shut down and lock up the car, Roxanne called into thin air “Mireille!”

Out of nowhere a tiny little creature popped into existence on the bed. It had huge eyes that would put any hypothetical inhabitants of the outer planets to shame, and its equally large ears were pointy, drooping downwards. Although it looked incredibly old, it reminded me of a puppy, in the way it looked at its mistress.

“Bring hot chocolate and chouquettes for our visitors,” said the dwarfish wizard, and the creature vanished, re-materialising seconds later, holding a tray of the ordered pastries, and with two steaming mugs floating next to it. When one floated my way I was just barely able to hold it in the air on my own. My physical limbs would certainly not stand the strain.

“You do know your marriage is a peculiar one, don’t you?” said Roxanne, as she and Françoise perched themselves on stools either side of the bed.

“The laws of the lowly muggles are indeed not yet as loose as we might like,” my pretend spouse answered, “But we need not concern ourselves with them, I trust? Or have the non-magical managed to add to our existing bigots?”

“No, I suppose not. Our books say nothing of who can marry – nor what marriage really is. Let’s hope my healer isn’t a blood-purist. I neglected to check, in past consultations.”

“Don’t worry, sister dear,” said Françoise, “Not a topic you naturally bring up out of the blue.”

As if on cue, the doorbell rang, and Mireille was sent to fetch the newcomer. Again, she magically teleported, and was back seconds later with the so-called healer. He was a scrawny, middle-aged looking man, and to me very poorly dressed for working in what I understood to be medicine, though he did carry a bag about big enough to carry a few basic supplies. Also, given his present company, he appeared unusually tall. Still, he looked me up and down the moment he spotted me, bright green eyes ostensibly seeking any obvious signs of my ailments.

“Good morning, Mr. Mallard,” said Roxanne, “This is my sister, Françoise, and her partner Marie Delamare.”

“You’re my patient, then?” the man asked me, barely acknowledging my other benefactors. I nodded slowly, taking in the sight, trying to decide whether I could disregard the clash between his alleged job and his attire. It wasn’t the particular materials I thought he was wearing, or the very out of date and anachronistic style of the whole affair that bothered me. I could swallow a general practitioner with a penchant for a caricature of Victorian era clothes. It was the sheer state of his tweed rags that put me off. He looked shabby to the bone.

“Do you mind?” Mallard shot at Roxanne, whose perch prevented him coming closer, “I need to examine her.” The mistress jumped from her stool and dragged it out of the way. Meanwhile, the healer pulled a wooden stick from his pocket. That it was several times longer than the flap it emerged from I overlooked. Instead, I noted that, like Roxanne’s, it was completely straight. It was only the third wand I had had occasion to observe in any detail, but I still wondered if my defunct one was somehow unique in its crookedness.

As the skeletal figure approached me I suddenly felt the need to repel him, and sought some words to do so. “I can tell you exactly what is wrong with me,” I said, forcing the words out loud and clear. “After I was first injured, there was a build-up of plaque on my spinal column, squashing the nerves. The, um, muggle doctors have previously been able to help my body treat it so far. Unfortunately I fell down the stairs this morning, and I fear the damage is beyond non-magical science.”

He stared at me, rigid on the spot. Just out of his sight, Françoise glared daggers at my unexpected outburst, but immediately launched herself to my defence. “My dear muggle wife had no choice but to resort to their care before our everlasting union began,” she said, “And we didn’t have reason to seek anything else before now.”

Mallard almost ignored her, but after a quick glance at Françoise he turned fully to face her. Then I noticed it too. Her freckles were turning blue.

“You look sick yourself,” he said, “Shall I treat you afterwards?”

She blinked, and put her hands on her cheeks, as if feeling the glowing spots. But she shook her head. “It’s all right. I’m convalescent from venutian flu, you know. I’ll be entirely fine soon. My last long paralysis was last night. The colour is more a good sign than anything else.”

“Never heard of it,” he muttered, and got back to me. “If your doctors were right, my work is foreshortened. I may have you walking again within a few hours. For proper reconstructive healing, you’ll probably want to see a specialist. For now, sleep.”

He waved his magic wand over the bed. The pain faded to an ache, and then to nothing. As I peacefully blacked out I wondered what would become of my hot chocolate after I ceased levitating it. 


	6. Chapter 6

I was kept asleep straight through the remainder of Thursday and out the other side. To my knowledge, I was neither fed nor hydrated throughout that period of slumber. Yet when I woke up, and was urged to rise for lunch, I could not find the slightest trace of hunger within me. It wasn’t that I felt full, just not remotely inclined to ingest any kind of matter, edible or otherwise. Still, I made no fuss, merely accepted the invitation to get out of bed, and let the little house elf guide me to where the food was.

Just up the road, the church bells sang their song for midday, and I contemplated the enormous pile of food I was to eat. It really was daunting, and there was no escape, no excuses, and no get-out clause. To make things worse, I knew my situation was urgent, and time in short supply, in spite of the lingering fog from painkillers, magical sleep and exhaustion. I was supposed to hurriedly feed myself as heartily as possible so I could be quickly whisked away to my next destination. I'm sure one of my hosts told me where that was, but I couldn't consciously summon the information yet. Come what may, I couldn't possibly get through the meal as fast as my company at the table, at least not without returning it to my plate soon afterwards.

Roxanne was hardly going to prepare an elaborately French suite of foodstuffs with well-defined stages for this occasion.

And the meal itself was nothing special, so there was no chance to invoke some ancient food aversions. There was just a lot of bread, some of it visibly fresh, some a day or two old, lots of butter and cheese, charcuterie, and a huge bowl of fruits, few of which appeared local. As the twins stuffed their faces I sipped my mug of hot chocolate for comfort. The chouquettes were long gone, but the drink had a spell on it that kept it warm until consumed.

“Eat,” Françoise commanded, drawing my attention to her. Since waking up and my eyesight slowly improving, I was seeing strange lines all over her face and wherever her skin showed. They looked like a network of really thin scars. Somehow, I felt I should know what they meant. Seeing an opportunity to evade the food problem, I decided to dare broach the subject.

“Why are you covered in scars?” I asked.

She blinked. “Those goons put a bunch of wards up while fighting you,” she said, visibly trying to jog my memory, “I got scorched on the way in.”

Her words reminded me of her irritation at routinely destroying whole outfits while on assignments, and having to carry several replacements with her all the time. However, before I could tell her nothing else came to mind, she tried to redirect me to she thought the most important issue at hand.

“Meanwhile, you must feed. I don’t know what you usually concoct in your little box in the meadows, but you’re not after getting it here, nor where you’re going. Get in shape.”

I choked on my drink, and it splattered everywhere. Geese, chickens, unlocked doors, and no carrots for the rat all popped up together. What _of_ my signal box in the meadows, now I was some sort of fugitive? I had let my beasts out before setting off, but neglected to feed them. I had also neglected to notify any of the nearby farmers of my absence. The thought of my birds and rodents going without care for any stretch of time violently pulled the veil from my eyes.

"Oh well," Françoise sighed, "That mug was destined to be spilled. What's wrong?"

Ignoring her, I asked Roxanne "Do you have a phone?" She swallowed her last mouthful, and was about to respond, but her sister got in first.

"Geoffrey knows," she said, "He's doing the rounds..."

"Never mind him," I cut her off, "I have my beasts to feed at the signal box. Someone's got to go see they're all right. Please, do you have a phone?"

Roxanne shook her head apologetically. "I used to have one; it held up many years against my magic. Unfortunately, since it finally passed on, I haven't been able to find any that lasted more than a couple of hours. However," she put a hand on her neighbour's shoulder, "I'm sure my sister won't mind walking back to the phone box in town and relaying your message to whoever you need."

Françoise groaned. In those moments she must really have hated not having a portable phone. There were still public ones, you see, only far fewer and far between than before, and often quite neglected. I remember seeing one where you couldn't see inside for all the tagging. The art wasn't even good most of the time. "Just eat," she said.

* * *

While Françoise was out, I was introduced to the "floo" teleportation system – well, almost. Roxanne was explaining to me how I was supposed to carefully enunciate the name of my destination while standing in the fireplace, when Mireille popped in to say there was no 'floo powder' left.

"Have you checked the cellar?" asked Roxanne.

"Mireille has searched the whole house, mistress," said the elf, "It's all gone."

Mistress didn't say anything, and I began to feel rather stupid, standing underneath the allegedly condemned chimney. Among other things, Healer Mallard had put my entire torso inside a bulky rig, like human-shaped scaffolding. It was the reason for my extended sleep, having taken all that time to undo some of the inflammation and break down some of the plaque coating my abused nerves. The last thing I wanted was to have soot and dirt all over me as well. At last Roxanne rescued me.

"Apparition it is, then," she said, and motioned for me to come back into the room. She took my hand, and then turned to Mireille one last time. "While I'm out, you will do as my sister tells you."

The elf's eyes widened in disbelief, but her mistress insisted "Mireille, you will obey Françoise. That is my wish, for you to serve me through her. Do your duty, little one."

The moment she was done speaking, the world spluttered and cracked around me. The next thing I knew, I was throwing up all over the floor. When I saw that the floor belonged to a tiny, poorly lit room with next to no furniture, I got the answer to the question I had momentarily wanted to ask. Apparition was merely the more horrible form of teleportation.

"Upsy daisy," Roxanne said. She swished her wand and the mess at my feet winked out of existence. "You know, you needn't have caved to my sister. There are better ways to pick up a little strength."

She moved to a nearby window and magically rolled up the shutter. Light flooded in. I averted my eyes and asked "Magical ways?"

"Exactly. Come closer." She leaned back, took my arm and pulled. "Welcome to London," she said.

I saw it was raining a bit, and that the street looked vaguely familiar. I was still thinking about Françoise. Finally it occurred to me, and, in more of a statement than a question, I said "She isn't magical herself?" 

Roxanne took a moment to realize I still hadn't changed gears, and then she told me all about squibs. The conversation then became a kind of revision session where each new point she brought up reminded me and expanded upon bits of what Françoise had tried to explain in the car. I was not surprised to hear of the way muggles are treated by wizard society, even the lack of legal personhood. It's only a little worse than the attitudes of some mutants regarding the small folk. Our most extreme elements may see non-mutants as genetically obsolete, but as far as I'm aware, no one actually thinks them to be sub-human. The issue lies in some refusing to believe it is possible for the two groups to coexist, each fearing bigotry from the other.

While we talked, Roxanne brewed tea, and directed me to the only bedroom in the flat, where I would find a cupboard with a suitable change of wardrobe. She told me to choose whatever I wanted, and she would make it fit me afterwards, the clothes having been originally cut for her small size. I ended up in almost the same outfit, a plain ankle-length dress, this one green like pine needles, and a pair of little round shoes. She also gave me an apron whose pocket I discovered to be bigger on the inside, and didn't bulge when filled up. When I put both hands in it looked like they'd been cleaved off at the wrists.

It was only a mild hassle getting into my new clothes, and thankfully I only needed help getting in and out of the scaffolding, because it was charmed to hold me together. With a mixture of magically altered steroids, magically enhanced rate of recovery, and my returning powers, I was able to go without the rig for the few minutes it took to levitate my own skeleton and wriggle into the cloth. 

When I thought I was done, Roxanne cast a spell at me. "Confundus," she said, but I saw no change. "People shouldn't notice the rig, now. Not unless you tell them it's there."

“Where are we going?” I asked.

"Oh, nowhere just yet; we just arrived. You just sit down for tea and scones, while I book a session with a specialist from St Mungo's. They’ll be able to deal with your injury once and for all. After that, we'll be off down Diagon Alley together. It's time you had a magical focus that was truly yours."


	7. Chapter 7

Since telephones and presumably most electronic devices didn’t work in the presence or contact of wizards, I assumed there would be some magical way of summoning a raven or a pigeon to carry messages. Actually, after Roxanne wrote her letter to the hospital, an owl flew in through the open kitchen window, and took her neatly rolled-up parchment in exchange for a handful of biscuit crumbs. Aside from its being active during the day, I thought the bird had an unusually strong presence. Because I wanted to learn on my own as much as possible, I didn’t comment, but I would have sworn that creature was considerably more intelligent than observation of its species so far suggested.

After the owl departed, it was time to go out into town. I expected us to exit the building physically, walking down a stairway, or taking a lift, and walking into the street like normal people trying to fit in, but I was wrong. Apparition was again the choice mode of transport. I did ask why, not remotely eager to experience it again, and longing for the day when a portable transmat device was invented, but Roxanne failed to give a conclusive answer. She mumbled musically about the flat not strictly existing and only being tenuously attached to the building it was in, before grabbing my arm. She unceremoniously dropped the two of us and her unfortunate scones in some back alley goodness-knows where, in the middle of London.

I’d only been to London once before, when I was much younger, more stupid, and to use wizard jargon, had less control over my obscurus. It was a school-trip to the UK, during which my principal concerns revolved around not getting separated from the rest of the group, and fighting the anxiety linked to that prospect. It happened once, and the results were not pretty. Windows were smashed, render peeled from walls, and some cobbles popped. A nearby woman had her diamond ring altered in a way that somehow didn’t involve fracturing the object yet still rearranged the lattices fundamentally. I think she might have been quite pleased to have such a unique jewel in her hands if it hadn’t rather gruesomely embedded itself in the bones of her wrist. That was the incident which saw me strongly encouraged to attend Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. The X-Men themselves were doing some sleuthing in the city at the time, and I was one of their red herrings. I suppose it is pure luck they found me before any British Aurors did. All of this to say that, though my visit with Roxanne was not my first, it may as well have been. From concentrating hard on never losing sight of my half-friends and tentative bullies, I never got a good look at my surroundings. And I certainly wasn’t going to waste energy listening to my teachers’ boring rambles about various architectural styles and where historical figures that nobody our age cared about.

Even on my day of introduction to the Wizarding World, where I was now old enough to have some passing interest in this huge famous metropolis, all I got was a glimpse of the less-famous parts of the part everybody knows about. You see, a brisk walk (I don’t know how little Roxanne does it; perhaps she levitates her feet) through two muggle streets and we entered Fantasy Land. A section of brick wall spontaneously dismantled itself at the touch of a wand, and we entered a small grouping of trap streets. My first prolonged and attentive exposure to the city was in Diagon Alley, a place no one in my entourage would know about, and which I was likely forbidden to speak of. I call it Fantasy Land, because, including Roxanne, almost every fantasy stereotype was on display. There were people seriously wearing sleeved robes, full-circle cloaks, leather boots, monocles, and walking with elaborately decorated canes. Waistcoats under jackets were the norm for men, as opposed to signs of an uptight office job, and so every variation in material, style and wear was represented. There were people well out of the normal bounds of modern human growth patterns, huge towering monsters and little beady-eyed sacks of wrinkles. One particular variety had pointy ears and hooked noses. I simply had to ask whether they were a different species, and Roxanne confirmed they were goblins.

I spotted a tall man, pale and with apparently natural bleach-blond hair flowing over his shoulders. I was trying to decide whether his air was deliberately haughty or just an unfortunate quirk of his resting face, when Roxanne stopped me in front of one of the many boutiques in the alley. It had two protruding half-cylinder windows on either side of the door. The inscription read ‘ _Ollivanders, makers of fine wands since 382 B.C._ ’ I have yet to accept that as a believable foundation date, magic or no magic.

“Here, this should be sufficient,” she said, pulling some coins from a pouch that I had not seen the slightest sign of on her person before. It was of course not the same currency as the rest of the country at large.

“Well, where are you going?” I asked taking the money, “I don’t know the first thing about your society, won’t I be a little conspicuous? What age do wizards usually get a wand? It must be earlier than me?”

“You had one before,” she insisted, “It was destroyed. That’s the truth. I’m sure he’ll be only too happy to refresh your mind on the principles of wand ownership.”

“All right,” I ceded, “But where are you going, leaving me in the wild like this? I don’t even know plain muggle London let alone this nightmare.”

“I have to make a few purchases which will be useful to us later. If you are especially quick, you can find me at Goosey & Bawkes. If you’re especially long, ask your way to the Leaky Cauldron. Don’t worry, no one will eat you. I think your little hardened vowels are quite charming, to be honest.” After that, she smiled encouragingly at me and walked off into the crowd. I had no choice but to seek my fortune within the allegedly ancient shop.

Colour inside was made up of whatever you could achieve with stained wood, with splashes of yellow from the oil lamps. It pleased me, compared to the depressing grey fog outside. In the countryside I don’t mind cloudy weather, as it is offset by the vegetation; the city, even this slightly more colourful spot, only reflected and amplified the dullness. That it was also nice and warm here only added to my comfort.

Behind the counter was a stairway leading up, and beyond that I could see basically a library of long thin boxes, stacked up together all the way to the ceiling. There was even a sliding ladder so you could climb and then move sideways while mucking around up top. For a long time, I was the only person around. Perhaps the owner was a little deaf; the bell did ring when I came through the door. That reminded me: I had absently walked in without lifting a finger to the doorknob. Both Françoise and Roxanne had spoken of magical mutants being unheard of in the wizarding world, and my gut feeling was that it was for worse reasons than simple rarity of the combination.

“Ah, welcome, my dear.” said a voice from around the corner, behind the stairway. An old man with enormous amounts of hair appeared. He stopped dead behind the counter as soon as he laid eyes on me. I assumed – correctly – that he was surprised that I did not fit his expectation of my age. “Curious,” he said, “The school year begins in a few months, and many do come to find their wands at this time; but you are well beyond your first terms at a magical school. To what do I owe the honour of your visit?”

“I had a wand,” I said, latching onto Roxanne’s words, “It was destroyed.”

“Oh,” he said, as if receiving the news of dead family member, “How very unfortunate. There is really no chance of mending it, then?”

I shook my head, “It disintegrated.” At that he raised an eyebrow. I expected him to repeat ‘curious’ again in a mystical way, but he politely asked me my name instead.

“Marie Delamare,” he repeated after me, as though savouring the words like a pleasant new taste. “Well,” he said, “Let us find you your first wand from Ollivanders.”

He motioned for me to come closer, and I stepped up to the counter while he ventured back into the stacks. “Now,” he started, “You’ll need one of a slightly lesser strength than those destined for eleven-year-olds. A wand willing to let you pick up where your last left you. Let me see...”

Still rambling to himself he moved out of sight. Now unobserved, I gently reached out with my feelers, imperceptibly nudging him and the objects around him to see what he was doing. He took three boxes from a shelf much smaller than the rest, somewhere behind the stairs and to the left of my position, before leisurely walking back into the picture and setting the boxes down on the counter before me. He contemplated his choice a second longer, and then opened the one he’d plopped nearest to me, and handed me its contents. The stick was pale, shiny, and quite straight, with decorative spirals on the handle. I took it gingerly in my leading hand, and considered my options.

To reproduce my successful uses of magic was out of the question. So I had to find a non-volatile experiment. There were only three proper spells I had knowingly witnessed being performed. The first would definitely land me in trouble, as I understood it to be solely dedicated to causing the cessation of life. I couldn’t imitate the second, as I was too dazed at the time to remember the incantation. As for the Confundus Charm, I thought it a little silly. Besides, I worried that attempting and failing to cast it might result in the revelation of the contraption currently allowing me to use my body on two legs. So, I aimed to reproduce what I had been underwhelmed by at my shooting range: just a little light or lights. My reward for restraint was an electric shock, with lingering pins and needles. I also got a new scorch mark in my palm to go with the scar my last wand had gifted me in its exploding death.

After he literally waved away the pain with his own wand, Ollivander handed me the next box in line. The result was similar, only this time, the pretty stick itself took most of the damage, rich red finish almost completely peeled away. The next unfortunate contender snapped in two like rhubarb the minute I closed my fingers on it. I was about ready to apologise for damaged property, pay for the trouble and leave, but the old man didn’t give me the chance.

“Perhaps,” he said, slowly, “it would be wiser if the intermediary were removed. Come.” He waved for me to walk around the counter and beyond.

“You want to let the right wand guide me to it?” I said. He smiled.

“Very good, Ms Delamare,” he said rubbing his hands delightedly, “I see your first wand-seller knew their craft.”

So I began my quest, and was soon engulfed by the maze-like library of wands. At first, I tried to discreetly feel what I could, using my telekinesis, in a big bubble of constant ad gentle nudging, seeking a reaction, but that was wrong. After a few minutes I retreated, reduced my perception to my hands and feet. The change came after several more minutes of aimless exploring, but it didn’t disappoint. I sensed an energy field of a familiar taste and texture. I recognized it to have been present before and after every one of my safe-zone sessions. It was the taste of magic. It was novel feeling it without fear, without the pressure of quickly finding a faraway place to let it loose without consequence on others. It was there, and so was I, at the same time, without tension or conflict.

A new landscape formed for me to navigate, in which each box, each wand was a different colour, a different texture. Each had a different message. Some longed to be tried, no matter who took them; some yelled to be left alone, and some felt numb, indifferent, as if they would have to be seduced. The only thing I could pin on all of them was foreignness. There wasn’t one which shared a colour with both me and its brethren at the same time. I was, everywhere I turned, the outsider. There was none for me. Not until I arrived at the very back end of the shop.

There was a big cardboard box sitting in a corner. There were other cardboard boxes, and boxes of other materials, and wand stacks that had seen better days, but this one stood out in the magical landscape. Unlike every other nebulous item around me, its contents were nattering endlessly. There was no uniformity to the message, nothing stood out loud and clear like it did with the other, except that, within that noisy mess, there was one familiar flavour. I went to my knees in front of the box and pried it open with my own hands, digging beneath the staples with my nails and rooting them out like weeds. Inside were several boxes, roughly piled onto each other. They were much bulkier than any of the others, as if holding much bigger objects within, yet when I pulled one out at random it felt no heavier. Opening that first box, I looked upon a stick that was nothing like most in the shop, devoid of special decorations or patterns, finished simply to a dark shine, and quite crooked, with a lazy curve from the handle to the spire. It felt warm in my hand, just like the one from Saulxures had when I first levitated it to my grasp.

Yet the conversation was not over. I put the wand in its box and delicately set it down on the floor beside me, before answering the call of another wand in another box. This one was an even more exotic shape, snaking not once but twice across its length. The point was sharp as well. I continued going through the box, each new find as welcoming as the last.

It occurred to me I hadn’t officially called in sick to Geoffrey. Françoise probably had done so on my behalf, but if I called and said I was still up to the job, it could be recorded as if I had never been off the case a second time. Whether I was going to respect the wishes for secrecy of a society which had already demonstrated its want to kill me was yet to be seen. Nobody else was ever going to find the evidence that Ollivander had so eagerly allowed me to find. For I was sure there was kinship between these wands and the one destroyed in battle hours earlier.

Contemplating the future of my investigation, I almost didn’t hear the doorbell of the shop ringing, and Ollivander greeting the newcomer.

“Forgive me,” I just heard him say, “I sense my last client may be nearing their prize.”

About half a minute later he arrived at my location, to find me sitting in a small sea of open boxes, in each a differently curved piece of wood, each of the same dark finish, each free of embellishments, and each ceaselessly whispering their welcome to me.

“You’re sure these are the ones?” asked Ollivander. I nodded.

“They feel like kin.” I said.

“Then the final word, for the time being, is yours.”

At that moment I was holding the closest approximation to the wand I had found in the château, a clearly defined handle, and a sharp angle at the base of the needle. “This will do.” I said.

He cast a spell with a wave of his hand and all the other wands flew back inside the cardboard, boxes sealing themselves, and the staples jumping from where I’d let them drop and sinking back into the lid, locking it up again. “Come, my dear,” said Ollivander, and we walked back to the front room of the shop. “Tell me,” he said, “You didn’t have one of them before, somehow? I believe the last to have purchased a wand of this peculiar family died decades ago.”

I didn’t answer straight away, distracted by the person who had arrived during my search. It was the tall pale man with the sickly blond hair. He stared right at me as I floundered for an answer.

“I don’t know if it was one of them,” I lied, “But it was like them. It was very talkative. It couldn’t wait for me to use it.” That was the truth.

“I used to sell these wands to one singular line of wizards,” Ollivander rambled as he fumbled around the counter for some papers, “The exact name they bore escapes me, but it was of the same country as you, Ms Delamare. An old french family, native to the north-east if I recall correctly. Yes,” he stopped, and looked up at the ceiling, summoning his knowledge, “the word referred to flowers, not that I can translate it, unfortunately...”

“De Fleurville.” I blurted, and instantly regretted it. Before the old wandmaker could verbalise his surprise, the other being in the room slithered into the conversation. He stood uncomfortably near, his height forcing me to look up at him to maintain eye contact.

“That is the name of a noble and most ancient house,” he said, “One which traced its roots to the same source as mine.” He moved a tiny bit backwards and held out his hand to me. “Lucius Malfoy,” he said, a thin smile tightening his lips.


	8. Chapter 8

It’d only been few days since I took the assignment to deal with Saulxures. That had been enough time for me to discover there was such a thing as magic, and I was able to use it. I had been attacked by wizards, and the people who rescued me happened to be of my own entourage, and were in on the grand conspiracy. Then, not only had most basic questions been spontaneously answered, information useful to the very case which had sent me on this journey might casually be revealed to me by two strange old men in another country. The magical world must be pitifully small, I concluded.

Although my first feeling was contempt, I also realized my current predicament could be much urgent than I thought, and much more than my guardian’s cool attitude suggested. Earlier, Roxanne’s calm and my convalescence had dampened the weight of Françoise’s call for me to eat. You see, it is much dodgier to hide in a small group than a big one. If the wizarding world was as tightly knit as it appeared, news would travel fast that there was a dangerous obscurial on the loose. If one of my assassins had survived, it might even be known the obscurial was a likely mutant. In a society as backwards as each step so far showed, I thought there would be three different kinds of people who might know of me here in Britain: the authorities, the press, and the aristocracy. It was to the third group I assigned the slimy character who had just now introduced himself to me.

I disliked Lucius Malfoy from the moment he opened his mouth. He spoke too slowly, too quietly, and it was visibly on purpose. His diction masked the particular timbre of his voice. That would make him difficult to identify should he simply cover his face and change dialect, and in turn, make my job harder. All the same, in good faith, I reached out to take his offered hand, and spoke my name. The snake pulled on mine and, to my horror, kissed it.

“I met a man named De Fleurville,” I said, “He wasn’t a wizard.”

“Indeed,” Malfoy drawled, “The squibs have carried the name far, then.”

“It was a fluke I ran into him. He didn’t even seem aware of magic.” There was no venom in my voice, but the serpent bared its fangs.

“Such a tragic waste,” he hissed. On the edge of my vision I spied Ollivander. He looked saddened rather than disgusted. Speaking of which, the old wandmaker took this moment to draw the conversation back to the task at hand.

It was a bit awkward retrieving the shrapnel Roxanne gave me earlier. I couldn’t levitate the coins out of my apron, so I had to manually reach in around the metal rig holding me together, while not giving away its existence (if present company was indeed unaware of it as intended). Aside from that my purchase went perfectly well. I learned that wands from this store were usually worth seven ‘Galleons’, which was exactly how much I had on me. However, Ollivander made an exception in my case – I would only pay four. Apparently, although the De Fleurville line tend to be very generous in raw power, they are also invariably short-lived, often ending in a blaze of fire. I could attest to this, of course, but kept silent. It was bad enough the shopkeeper had seen my scar, and I had hinted at my old wand’s explosive destruction. If my gut correctly judged the snake, it wouldn’t do for Malfoy and Ollivander to have an extended conversation about me in my absence.

The precise cause of my wand-family’s volatility was to do with the relationship between the “core” and the “sleeve”, particularly the behaviour of the phoenix feather within. Unfortunately, by the time I understood the phoenix core had been plucked from a real, living bird, Ollivander had finished his explanation. I exchanged parting pleasantries with the two men, and at last walked out of the shop. Thinking of Malfoy’s incursion I sorely regretted not requesting a partner for the case when I had the chance. I was convinced one of our new recruits was able to increase and decrease his hearing at will to considerable extremes, and had a hunch he might hear the serpent spout some trivial concern as pretext to come and spy on me.

Stepping onto the cobbles I stopped dead, but not just to look around for my guardian. It was still shocking to me, fresh out of my green pastures, that any street could be so busy, so colourful and so full of extremes. Within ten seconds of looking at the crowd I saw rags and riches, massive height differences, clashing clothing styles and chameleon anatomy, specifically a woman whose hair was changing colour all on its own constantly. There were even groups of kids running around loose. And throughout the alley there were more different shops and services packed together tight than I had ever seen in one place before.

I began to consider what lay ahead of me now. Almost without me noticing, I had become an active participant in the hidden community. I had obtained an item through the local currency, playing by the rules. It wasn’t my first time infiltrating a secret society, but here was different. There clearly was some coordinated organisation within, possibly even the kind I had encountered on other assignments. Normally I would try to discreetly open it up, look at the moving parts, and write a nice long report of my dissection for the office. I might easily find out what happened in Saulxures for the village to deserve one of its principal distinctive features being so drastically altered. With luck, my higher-ups would give me a few extra francs, some time off, and then any further work would be handed over to the actual secret service. But you couldn’t do business as usual with this little world. Right here, at ground level, the wizards were a bunch of regular people getting on with their lives. Even if there was some nefarious entity at the top, knocking it down would mean dropping the sky on the small folk. Besides, given the haphazard management of my suppressed magic, it wasn’t likely there were many wizards already in the service, let alone anyone capable of getting inside. It was pure luck I was even alive to ponder my plans. If anything had to be done, it would probably fall unto me.

Time was dragging, I was still stood in front of Ollivanders, and there was no sign of Roxanne. It had taken ages to get my wand, and probably would have done even if the old man had known straightaway what to do with me and had there been no interruption. She wouldn’t still be at Goosey & Bawkes, whatever that was, so I had to find the Leaky Cauldron – quickly, or else at any moment the Lord Snake might emerge from behind and offend me by existing.

The next thing I knew a friendly giant walked two paces out of his way, and completely filled my field of vision. If you can imagine André Roussimoff, bigger, hairier, somehow merrier and very Irish, then you have an accurate representation of the man before me. He asked if I needed directions. Even though I had spotted larger-than-life beings since entering the Alley, I wasn’t ready for this encounter. It was only after I accepted and Mister Hagrid was accompanying me to the Cauldron himself that I recovered enough to wonder what gave away my being lost. I had just about ended my contemplation when he turned up, and certainly hadn’t had time for any anxiety to influence my face. Perhaps standing still in front of the wandmaker’s was conspicuous enough. I decided to wait for another similar occurrence before asking sinister questions.

At the other end of the street was another brick wall, and it also could be triggered to open up, although not with a wand this time. The giant used his umbrella instead. I didn’t comment for fear of appearing ignorant, but then Hagrid shot a glance at my new focus, still clutched in my hand, and I had better cause for silence. For a split second he looked sad, as if recalling a painful loss. But before I could so much as cloak my wand from his eyes the emotion washed away and he grinned.

“Welcome ter the Leaky Cauldron,” he said, “Miss...?”

“Delamare.”

“Aye. Lovely name. Not often we get visitors from other lands.”

“Everyone keeps to themselves,” I offered.

“Shame,” he lamented, “Everyone’s afraid a’ getting out and about these days. But not you, eh?”

“I do my best,” I said, and held out my hand. It disappeared inside the giant’s palm, but he didn’t try any funny business. “Till next time, Mister Hagrid.”

“Pleasure being of service, Miss Delamare.”

On my insistence, we did not linger in the Cauldron, even though my leftover Galleons would have easily covered a drink for the both me and Roxanne. It was good that nobody could see the elaborate scaffolding keeping my spine straight, but it didn’t justify prolonging the piling fatigue in my legs from carrying the weight. If there was a specialist capable of restoring my back at least to the degree of functionality I was used to, I didn’t want to hang around. I had my new wand and I was in the company of a recognized wizard, so I with a few easy benign spells I expected to easily pass as a wizard myself.

Roxanne was disappointed, but led the way back to Muggle London just the same. She lagged, visibly reluctant to leave, looking all around to burn as much of the inn onto her memory as she could. I didn’t blame her. Any other day I would have been happy to stay in the Leaky Cauldron for a while, as it was a worthy sight. It had bare stone walls and heavy wooden tables finished a dark earthy brown. There was a low-roofed gallery off to one side, held up by pillars which were covered in posters. There were rickety stairs going up and up, and below the high ceiling beams randomly crossed the empty space, betraying a tiny clue of the building’s infrastructure. There was a huge semi-opaque window made of a thousand diamond-shaped pieces. I would have wanted to stay, first to learn what magic made such a place possible to keep warm, and second to learn what magic made the pictures on the pillars move. It was clearly printed ink, yet the pictures moved with the same fluidity as any display on a TV screen.

On the muggle side of the city we emerged from a tall wooden door set into a cylindrical protrusion in the facade. It was part of what looked a very old, very abandoned establishment. It was exactly the sort of place I would expect to find a meeting ground for some strange secret society. From here, my fire-haired dwarfish guide kicked up the pace. She took us left down a narrow closed-in passage and then left again into a big wide street, with at least two lanes for traffic, lots of big red buses, lots of windows, and fairly generous pavements. Once more many of the truly distinguishing features of this area were lost on me. I was too busy walking fast to keep up, and this was less than pleasant on my tiring frame. The rig stifled movement in my arms and shoulders, making me use up more energy just maintaining balance. This stilted my gait, and in turn worsened the pain and discomfort. Within minutes I had tunnel vision, fixated on the burning red blob ahead, and her promise of somebody resembling a competent surgeon to fix me.

Roxanne stopped dead in her tracks, and I very nearly knocked her over, stalling my foot inches from the small of her back. It wouldn’t do to gift her my injuries. She stood still and silent a long time, long enough that I was able to summon the words to ask for a little rest before the next apparition. But before I could speak, she spoke her own thoughts aloud.

“Where are you?” she said. It wasn’t directed at me. As she was quiet after that, I became more aware our surroundings. We were nowhere near our landing spot when teleporting out of her apartment. In one face of that street there had definitely been a huge double-door, but nothing remotely resembled that here. It needn’t mean much, of course. I had assumed we would go back to the same spot, but with teleportation available, you wouldn’t necessarily bother nearing your home on foot. Perhaps there were rules I didn’t know yet.

This street was narrow, but wide enough that there were two lanes in the road. At the moment that I was looking around, there were no other living beings in sight, but you could still hear the lively city carrying on beyond.

Having had plenty of time to recover, I took a deep breath and opened my mouth to ask “What is it?” But again, I was denied the chance. In the distance a police siren wailed, and wailed closer and closer. From around the corner came the familiar rasping rattle of a ratty old engine at full gas.

Headlights blazing even in broad daylight, and still muddied from its last outing in the woods and the rain, my 2CV appeared round the corner and roared down the street. She squealed to a halt right slap bang in front of us, and both the front and rear doors on our side of the vehicle burst open. I gave up hope of getting a word in.

“Mireille!” Roxanne cried, “What do you think you’re doing here?”

“It’s the men from the Ministry!” the little elf cried back, half-standing, half-floating in the tiny space between the steering wheel and the driver’s seat. “They came for Mistress’s sister’s wife!” she wailed on, “And they arrested Mistress’s sister!” 


	9. Chapter 9

You can usually tell whether you’ve been out cold long or not. Broadly speaking, there’s a clear difference between waking from a short nap and emerging from several hours of sleep. This was not the case for me when Roxanne lifted her jinx. All I knew was that my eyes were shut and I couldn’t remember what had happened back in the alley.

“Don’t look yet, you won’t like it.”

Roxanne cautionary remark was the first item that got through my skull from outside, before I finished coming to my senses. I heeded her advice because soon everything was contradictory.

I was strapped into a seat, whose simple design and ill fit for my back easily identified it as one of the 2CV’s. The comfort situation was only made worse by Dr. Mallard’s contraption. I began to hear the engine running, and then feel it steadily rattling the whole car, vibrations coming through the floor under my feet. From where she had spoken from, Roxanne must be driving, which I thought would only be a slightly less comical sight than Mireille at the wheel. The elf herself I detected as my non-corporeal limbs extended. She was curled up in the small space behind the steeply reclining driver’s seat, rocking back and forth endlessly.

Now, all of that was fine, there was nothing extraordinary going on. It was my second time in 48 hours being driven away in my own car by a dwarf, to some mysterious location. That annoyed me a little because it reminded me of how helpless I had so suddenly become. What was quite unacceptable and likely what Roxanne was referring to, lay without the car.

There was no road. There was also no path, no dirt, no grass, not even a swamp to sink in: there was no ground at all beneath the car, just void. There were no streets rushing by, or trees or bushes, or any other solid objects to tickle my special senses. Even without powers you could have worked it out. The engine was too quiet, and there was no extra resonance or friction from the wheels on tarmac. Yet the car was definitely moving. I could feel mine and its weight shifting differently.

“Flying, are we?”

“Afraid so.”

“It’s all right,” I said, opening my eyes and looking out at the clouds. That was all there was to see beyond the glass, just clouds.  “You warned me. I’m getting used to this stuff now.”

“Really? You didn’t leave that impression earlier...”

I turned towards her. She was frowning at me. “Don’t you remember..?” she asked.

I tried to recall what she might be speaking of, and came upon a blank in my memory. There was nothing after Mireille’s arrival in the deuche. It was a familiar nothing, the sort of nothing I might have expected to find after my session in the woods at Saulxures, instead of neatly jumping forward a few hours.

“What happened?”

 “You, um,” Roxanne hesitated, “Your obscurus was stirring. I had to jinx you before any serious damage was done...”

“But there was some damage..?”

“Oh, mostly broken glass and some scratches in the road. And you didn’t touch your car at all, so...”

I cut her off. “What is it you’re afraid to tell me?”

“Ah.” She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then, freely at last, she explained “The damn coppers arrived right on Mireille’s heels. They got right up to us. Well, you started trashing their car. There was almost nothing left afterwards – except the officers, thank goodness...”

“Unharmed?”

She grimaced. “I wouldn’t know about broken bones and such, but I did obliviate them. I wiped their minds. They’ll be cursed with unanswerable questions forever.”

“Do you think that’s wise? France isn’t the only country with a special investigations bureau...”

“I’m not too worried about your lot,” she said, “It’s the Auror Department, the British one. They’re bound to hear about this. I reckon they’ll have started tracking us by the time we get to St Mungo’s. That’s why we’re not going to St Mungo’s...”

“Wait, how would they track us? Did somebody see the car flying already?”

She shook her head, a faint smile curving her lips just a bit, “There’s only one authorised flying car in Britain, and that’s my uncle’s, not your lovely old bucket. He’s the one what taught me the enchantments.”

“Oh. Well, that’s dire. Where...” I broke off, as a completely different question surfaced: what of the other dwarf, the first one to have sat in _my_ driver’s seat while wearing shoe extensions to reach the pedals?

“What of Françoise...?”

“Hush!” Roxanne held a finger in front of her mouth, and then signalled with her thumb toward the back of the car. I sensed rather than saw Mireille down there, still endlessly rocking back and forth. “Not a word just yet.”

“All right, fine,” I said, “Just tell me about where we’re going. Tell me about how it’s safe and that it’s a place where there’s no chance of evil wizards attacking us without reason or process.”

To my surprise, she did not disappoint. I couldn’t be bothered not to take her at face value, too tired to analyse each new element of information and examine the ramifications on my worldview, and so was able to relax a little, while she spoke to me of her fantasy castle. We were journeying to Hogwarts School of Magic, the safest place in the whole country according to her, where she had learned almost all her skills, and home to some of the most powerful wizards of the age. If there was anywhere that we could hope to be protected while attempting to clear our names, that was it.

While Roxanne was busy telling me tales of all that went on at the famed magical school with its neighbouring monsters and in-built safety hazards, I leant back in my chair a bit. My spine was a lost cause, so I tried to at least lessen some of the tension in my arms and legs, letting my physical sensations move aside for the immaterial ones. I extended my non-corporeal form outwards, taking in the feeling of constant falling with as little prejudice as possible. After a few minutes of stretching I felt the clouds passing through me, great shapeless masses of almost nothing. A little while longer and I could make out where the vapour was more or less dense, the spots barely registering now I was stretched so thin. I knew that, if I continued reaching further and further, bloating the bubble ever more, I would cease to feel anything. It would reduce my field of awareness to the same mess of bone and flesh that almost everybody else on the planet was confined to. It would be like not being a mutant, being normal, a taste of the lives of folks who don’t have to deal with every shade of weird all the time. I carried on.

Albus Dumbledore sounded like a right honourable fellow, and an incredibly old one at that, from what Roxanne was saying of him. Unfortunately, she had only just started on his most famous exploits when I encountered a distraction that took all my attention, robbing me (I’m sure) of many fascinating stories. It was at my furthest extremities, off to the right somewhere, a vague suggestion of a presence, almost tickling me for how weak it was. At this distance, it could have been anything, a bird, a drone, or the tip of an aeroplane’s wing; I was stretched too thin to tell.

Unable to focus on anything but this tiny, next to imperceptible disturbance, I sought a way to discreetly get a better look at it, all the while pretending I was still enraptured with Roxanne’s tales of epic wizarding battles. After shrinking back far enough that I could feel my immediate environment once again, I tried to find a way of swaying our course somehow. The car only needed to move ever so slightly to the side to make a worthwhile change.

Observation revealed that there was no tangible difference in how Roxanne was driving the car in the air and how anyone would drive it on the ground. So surely steerage must still be controlled by the wheel and, by extension, the whole steering mechanism. Of course, I was used to directly acting upon the entire contraption, but not in a stealthy way. With extreme caution therefore, I slowly wrapped my immaterial hands around the central axle, and even took hold of the wheels too. I nudged, deliberately too little at first, then a bit more, and a bit more. Still the official driver talked and talked. It was strange that she should go on and on like this. Perhaps she was doing it in order to cope. Finally I saw the steering wheel itself turn about two inches clockwise, and held it there a bit. When I thought a big enough deviation should have happened, I gently relinquished control, and started expanding again.

By now I had thoroughly lost track of whatever Roxanne was rattling on about, and could only guess at the right moments to nod or ‘hmm’ as if listening, but I hoped to be able to end the charade soon. I was much quicker this time, in blowing up my field of perception to its near-useless maximum.

What I found out there gave ample cause to break what had become a completely one-sided conversation, but when I returned my focus to the car for the second time, it had already gone quiet, or as quiet as the engine’s rasp allowed. Roxanne was staring at me before I even looked at her.

“Don’t think I can’t feel you thrashing about like that,” she said, “What have you found?”

I was so taken aback she had to nudge me in the ribs to get my response. “Well?” she insisted.

“There’s a large solid object flying right alongside us. It’s too big and bulky to be a bird, but it’s not big enough to be an aeroplane. I don’t think we’re going slowly enough that it could be a weather balloon.”

“I see.” She dropped her hands from the wheels, and almost let herself fall back to lean on her seat, but caught herself at the last moment. Because of my modifications making the seat recline further than normal, she’d have tumbled back and lost control of the car completely. With an annoyed look over her shoulder, she settled where she was on the edge. “Bugger.”


	10. Chapter 10

In the next few moments, so many things happened that I wonder if the precise order of them hasn’t been a bit jumbled up in my memory. Without warning, Roxanne burst into action. She rolled down the driver-side window and thrust out her wand, barking at Mireille to come out of her stupor. She gave her instructions that I didn’t understand, before conjuring a shimmering transparent sphere all around the car. The spell was a single word, but in the confusion I failed to catch it. She cast half a dozen other spells, but these within the car. Most flew over my head, but I recognized one that she put on the three of us. It was the same levitation spell she’d first used on me in Bar-le-Duc, ‘Wingardium Leviosa’. Then, before I could even draw breath to ask why all this was happening, she dropped out of her frantic bubble and looked right at me. Whatever I was going to say she managed to freeze in my throat just with her eyes.

“Brace yourself,” she said, “And be prepared to outlive your precious deudeuche.”

Immediately, though I saw no movement from Roxanne to announce it, my car completely changed trajectory. All the weight she had magically taken off my frame was dropped back on me and doubled, as we shot skywards at what felt like a painfully perfect right angle. Although occupied by the sudden grief on my nerves, I noticed an instant reaction outside. Not one, or two, but three solid bodies tickled my senses in the distance, and quickly swooped in closer and closer, easily matching our speed and direction. The objects gained ground, their shape more and more defined. Another one appeared and joined the pursuit.

Now that there was substance to chew on I concentrated hard, trying to get a glimpse of what might be after us. For a long time all I got was a vague sense of mass slowly growing, but as each entity pushed further inside my bubble more details formed, and I recognized skeletons and soft tissue. But abruptly, after a minute or so accelerating upwards, they were all gone, apparently leaving the chase.

 “Is he still coming?” Roxanne slapped my arm and I opened my eyes, having closed them without thinking. I was immediately blinded. There were no more clouds and we were still climbing higher, almost completely exposed to the burning sun but for the car’s roof.

“Yes,” I said, shielding my face from the light, “All four of him.”

“Four?” she exclaimed, and the car accelerated even faster, “Are you sure?”

“There might be even more,” I answered, “What do you think they are? For all I could tell it might be giant bats...”

She waved her hand in dismissal, “Aurors on brooms,” she said, and finally slowed the car.

Even after my eyes had adjusted it was unusually bright. There was nothing left in the air above us to block the sun’s rays. To be so high in so short a time, we must have climbed at unimaginable speed.

“I suppose there’s a limit to how high a broom can fly, as opposed to a car?”

Roxanne shook her head; “There’s a limit to how high a person can breathe without carrying their own air.” she motioned outside, as we came to stop, “Once you’re beyond where most clouds can form I reckon it’s a safe bet.”

“So we’re at least 10000 feet up?” I asked. She nodded. “And how are we carrying our air? My ‘old bucket’ isn’t exactly airtight, last time I checked...”

“Magic.”

“Oh...”

“But it _is_ in limited supply,” she continued, “And there’s no telling your giant bats won’t also contrive of a way to reach us, so we need to act fast.” She slid back in her seat and turned away from the wheel to face toward me. “That apparition machine,” she said, “You can make it work can’t you, same as Françoise did?”

She was pointing at the transmat.  I had a small moment of doubt before I answered, wondering what she could possibly need the device for, in light of magical teleportation. And then, on top of that, I recalled the content of one of my last calls to Geoffrey. “What do you mean, ‘as Françoise did’?” I asked, already worried, “It hasn’t been used since Wednesday has it?”

Roxanne blinked. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then spoke in a whisper, glancing once toward her servant in the back, “Sister used it to send Mireille to us. She knew the correct coordinates to aim for. Unfortunately the car landed in the middle of traffic, and it caused a bit of a ruckus...”

My hair stood on end. I was about to shout but swallowed my words at the thought of the frightened elf, and also looked her way. Mireille was floating above the remaining back seat, in a sitting position, eyes closed and face furrowed in concentration. The sight almost made me lose track. Still, I returned to Roxanne, and did my best to explain without blowing my top.

“Your sister wouldn’t know about this because her van is big and sturdy and new, but you do _not_ want to be using the transmat now. It’s a massive strain on the electronics because we can’t afford to optimize the interface, because top brass are a bunch of gits, and... Well it’s a miracle this vehicle’s still running if there’s already been another jump. Especially right from Bar to London, that’s mental, way out of safety range. Find another plan. You know where you’re taking us, why not just apparate properly?”

“No,” she said, “Can’t. Hogwarts has defences against apparition, strong ones. Your transmat is the only method that no one knows anything about. It’s the only way in that stands a chance. Do it. I’ll give you the coordinates.”

“You’re quite sure?” I asked, speaking as slowly as I could, looking her right in the eye. “Are you that desperate?”

But she didn’t back down. “Do it!” she snapped. “We’ve no time.”

I didn’t question how she knew the correct format for the coordinates, though specific it was. Likely her sister showed her at some point. As soon as the last heading was cleared, I merely nodded to her and she fed me the data. I didn’t even say anything when I saw that the rough distance of the jump would be over 500 kilometres. It was only a hundred or so less than the previous outrageous journey. I was resigned to see us fail to complete the trip and drop clean out of the sky. Whether that happened right there or marginally closer to her magical castle was academic. At this stage, doom would be a release from this horrible roller coaster of madness. I went through the motions, gave one last warning of our almost certain failure, and pulled the lever. Nothing happened.

“So much for that,” I said, “I take everything back, there was no miracle. The fuses are already shot. You did somehow force the engine to life back there, whether knowingly or not. Find another plan. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Ah, crap,” Roxanne honked, deflating. She fell all the way back into the steeply reclining driver’s seat and lay there, silent. I closed my eyes for a little respite from the light. It was very quiet up here. The 2CV was still rasping and rattling away, but only so loud now she was at rest.

I was about to turn my attention on Mireille when the dwarf spoke, still staring at the roof. “Four of them did you say?” She sat up again, “You’ve dealt with three before, somehow – and now there are three of us. Maybe we’ll live. Besides, perhaps they really can’t reach us up here. After all this time...”

“Yeah sure, I barely got rid of two Aurors while basically on my own turf with a ton of battlefield advantages,” I gestured toward the void outside, “What am I going to throw at them out here?”

She waved her hand at me again, “Pray you won’t need to, then.” And with that she set us in motion.

We didn’t have long to wait. Only about ten minutes later, maybe more, our pursuers came close enough that I could feel them. They were climbing up towards us from somewhere below and behind.

“Here they come,” I announced.

“How many?”

“Still counting...”

There were at least five objects at by this time, but because they were catching up to us much less quickly than before, it was difficult to tell whether the furthest was one or two separate parts. But before that mystery cleared up, the closest was arriving in visual range – I could see a little black spot in the side view mirror, slowly growing.

“Mireille?” Roxanne called, “Are you ready?”

The elf squeaked, “Yes Mistress.”

“Splendid. Hold tight everyone.”

Yet again, the car instantly went from flying one way to another, this time hurtling backwards roof first, as if swatted from underneath by some irate giant. I barely realized what was happening when there was a resounding clang and a muffled scream as a large airborne man slammed into the transparent ball outside. Mireille whimpered. The car rolled and tumbled, but carried on nonetheless, and passed right through the swarm of the other pursuing broom-mounted lawmen. They had flown right past and beyond my senses in the time it took them to react and begin to swing back around.

“All right,” I said, holding my head in my hands as the car slowed and stabilized, “Since you knocked one out, we’ve only to face five of them.”

Roxanne nodded, and then glanced at her servant, “Well done. Keep it up.”

“What...?” I asked, but aborted my own question as the answer dawned on me: the elf was maintaining the shield. That was my last coherent thought before the Aurors returned and unleashed their punishment upon us. They only got a few seconds to cast a barrage of spells at the car before Roxanne hit the gas again, but it was enough for the protective sphere outside to flare bright red. Mireille was panting when we emerged from this assault, accelerating away.

But there was little respite as the swarm caught us up in the next couple of seconds. I heeded the driver’s advice and gripped the seat beneath me as she started moving my old deuche in ways that it should never have dreamed of except during some nightmarish accident, darting about in three dimensions like an enormous metal fly. How she was able to do this with only a steering wheel and a few pedals remains a mystery. And soon the repeated directional strains took their toll on me. Partly healed or not, all the pains of the early morning’s injuries were firing up and overwhelming me. I lost sight of what was happening outside, shrunk down to the confines of my own bones and curled up on the seat, wishing this would simply end. No such luck.

“Marie!” Roxanne punched me in the side, “Do something. There’s only so long I can keep surprising them with a giant bludger.”

“That hurt!” I yelped, “Everything hurts and I can’t do anything...”

We were in the midst of another somersault. Momentarily forced to look beyond my shins, I glimpsed the shimmering sphere flaring all sorts of colours under an unending wave of infernal energies unthinkable. Seeing my sorry state, the dwarf turned her wand on me and practically screamed “Dolorem Remollio Maxima!”

It was like a real life version of a cartoon pick-me-up, where you are instantly restored to your peak physical state. Every ache in my joints, every bruise from the cage, and every last trace of anguish and discomfort throughout my spine evaporated, down to the last vertebrae. There had to be a catch in it, I thought, and so didn’t immediately ask why this hadn’t been the first treatment option for me. In any case Roxanne wasn’t about to indulge me.

“Get to work!” she barked, just before landing another lucky hit: the car shook once, and then a rider-less broom coasted alongside for a few hundred yards, before we yet again violently changed course under a hail of battle magic. She rolled down her window and poked her arm out, wand held tight between her fingers. Screeching what sounded like vitriolic verbal abuse, she sent out her own jinxes and magical nasties into the air, her spells passing out unaffected through Mireille’s screens. I saw an Auror who had been diving at us suddenly fly off and out of the way, narrowly escaping a bright red streak aimed at his face.

I extended my telekinetic bubble and tried to get a sense of the battlefield. I found that the enemy still numbered five; clearly knocking a wizard off his broom didn’t suffice to kick him out of the battle. In spite of the deuche’s careening all about the place in no particular direction, the swarm had managed to drag us down a long way towards the clouds. The thick sheet was visible like a huge white table of fluff. It would be the end if they took us under where the driver couldn’t see them properly.

To make matters worse, the car itself was moving less and less as Roxanne spewed more and more vicious spells through her window, divided attention rendering us static.

Disaster struck after the Aurors were enough impressed by the dwarf’s ability to defend herself that they decided to back away and get out of range. Three disappeared to me completely while the other two stayed behind to harass and distract us. Then, in formation, the others dropped out of the sky above, joining forces and blasting a veritable torrent of offensive magic straight upon the protective sphere. It turned bright red around us, then yellow, and incandescent white. Mireille screamed. I smelled burning. The shield went into the ultraviolet, and dissipated.

Before the light even faded I could feel and almost see the fluff of cloud swallow the deudeuche as it sunk down. Roxanne was in a daze, no longer controlling our trajectory. There was no sign of movement outside.

There came a whisper from the back seat. “Mistress..?”

“Yes, dear,” Roxanne sighed, “Well done. But I’m afraid you’ll have to try harder next time.” She turned to me. “Is there nothing you can do to them?” she asked, “Choke them, perhaps? Rip their hearts out? Or hell, why don’t you throw the wheels at them? We don’t need those up here.”

I shook my head. No one was going to conveniently stick near me long enough for me to slowly kill them. But if only to feel less helpless I started rummaging around the car. I didn’t expect to find much. My bows and crossbows wouldn’t be in, not at this time of year. But there might be a little left-over railroad clinker ammunition, for my old slings. Actually, my probing revealed one object that was alien to me, hidden away in the boot. A cursory prod and nudge did not immediately reveal its nature. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

A voice called out from the fluffy, steamy void, its speaker well beyond where I could feel. “Surrender the obscurial now. No more need die today.” It was a woman’s voice, loud and clear, but with an odd ring to it, as though coming through a megaphone.

“Keep her talking,” I whispered to Roxanne.

“You know about Marie, then?” she called.

The woman answered immediately, some way off to the left, “Yes. She is a dangerous obscurial, and a very old one at that. You are endangering yourself by attempting to protect her. Let one of us escort you away without resistance and no significant charges will be brought against you.”

From the same direction, an Auror slowly moved forward, just nudging me on the edge, and further hurting my focus. Frustrated, I shrank, amalgamating my non-corporeal form toward the back of the car. I could no longer directly track the swarm’s movements outside. This made my task a lot easier...

“What has my friend done to warrant liquidation? If I am to betray her to you, I must know...”

“You have no choice,” the Auror cut her off, much louder now. Her voice was less tinny, easily covering the light click and whine as I unlocked the boot of the 2CV and gently pulled it open. “If you survive this encounter,” she continued, “The whole case will be explained to you, in a safe, locked cell. Relinquish the obscurial.”

Roxanne hesitated, and I opened one eye. She was looking at me. I waved my hand for her to carry on. “Where would you take me,” she called to the approaching Auror, “I am a French citizen, and therefore...”

But she didn’t get to finish. “Now you’re just stalling,” said the approaching Auror. “Make up your mind.”

Again there was silence. I gestured at my companion to carry on, making small circles with my fist. All I needed were a dozen more seconds.

“All right, fine. I capitulate.” Roxanne threw her arms up as I cracked on eye open her side. “One of you take me away...”

The Auror arrived close enough to speak without amplification. “Inform your elf that she is no longer bound to your service, and lower her shield. I will personally fly you to safety.”

I finally opened my eyes again, and the witch emerged from cloudy veil, floating confidently toward the 2CV from some way ahead and to the driver’s side. She was a young one, and ostensibly in good health. Her blond hair was neatly tucked away under a big pointy hat, and her long messy overcoat hung symmetrically on either side of her broom. She was holding out her wand, and as she came closer her eyes sparkled in anticipation. Her full cheeks were flushed from the exertion of the earlier battle.

This young lady intended to kill me, as did every one of her unseen colleagues. There was no doubt about it; she’d said so herself. She had been trying to kill me for the past fifteen odd minutes. Had I been alone, she would have easily succeeded. This wasn’t my first encounter with an individual who I could be certain would try to put an end to my life in the immediate future. My job routinely dropped me in it, and I had to fight with dirt to get by. But I still faltered when light fell on the girl and she was merely drifting forward, just a youthful face that had yet to see the wars, pointing a funny little stick in my general direction. You don't normally snuff someone out who isn't visibly about to smash your skull. And then Roxanne elbowed me in the ribs.

The air cracked as the shotgun went off, the noise a veritable bludgeon in its own right. Unfortunately however, it was not enough to significantly affect me – or Roxanne, and so we both saw the results quite lucidly. What had been a fresh, unblemished and very attractive countenance was gone. Briefly, a shredded mess of bone and flesh was exposed in its place, before the dying girl’s hat mercifully drooped forward obscuring the ruins as the rest of her body toppled. The broom rotated on the spot for a second, then dropped out of the sky.


	11. Chapter 11

“What..?” Roxanne whimpered. Appalled, she stood on the seat and leaned through her window. She probably knew what she would see, but still flinched at coming face to face with the weapon her sister had left us. There was nothing in the chamber, but I panicked, grabbing her by the collar and pulling her back inside. It didn’t occur to me simply to turn away the gun itself.

It was just as well I reacted like that, because the next moment an angry red ball of energy slammed into the deuche’s side, shattering the rear window instead of the dwarf’s head.

“Up!” I shouted, but we were already in motion. The car shot up like a bullet, acceleration squashing me into my seat. Behind, the boot banged shut instantly, and I struggled to keep hold of Françoise’s unknowing gift. Within seconds the clouds thinned to nothing and we came under the sun’s burning glare, but there was no slowing this time. The engine alternately croaked and roared, and very nearly cut out when another blasting spell hit us from underneath. Still Roxanne continued the climb full speed. Air bellowed through the open windows as we screamed upwards.

“What’s going on?” I cried, “There was no wind before!”

“Mireille!” Roxanne called, “Screens!” and thrust her arm out once more, the shimmering ball forming without another word. As relative quiet re-established, I turned to look at the elf in the rear. She was still there, and I could see she’d started supplementing the shield, but she was confused. She kept looking from her mistress to the floor. Finally she saw me and whined her frustrations.

“Mireille thought Mistress didn’t need her any longer,” she said, “Mistress said she was leaving...”

“Not anymore!” mistress barked, and slowed us down at last, before grabbing my shoulder and turning me back to face forwards again. “Reload,” she told me, “We’ll talk later.”

The following hail of spells made it get visibly darker as they pelted the sphere relentlessly. The swarm had managed to stay right on top of us this time. I gripped my seat with both hands, closed my eyes, and repeated the process of moving a cartridge into the gun, all the more tedious now we were not remotely stationary.

The battle raged outside, all the more hectic now I couldn’t see or sense it beyond Mireille’s failing protection and the driver screaming magical abuse through her window. The endlessly changing evasive manoeuvres felt completely random with the enemy’s movements hidden to me.

Finally the shot was loaded. I hugged the gun as close to the car as possible and tried to appraise the situation, opening my eyes again. I had four shells of buckshot left, and the Aurors numbered at least that many. I was hardly a sniper, and it could easily be that the remaining wizards were wise to my new toy.

“I’m never going to hit anything,” I said.

“Well, then we’re doomed, aren’t we?”  Roxanne shouted just as she landed her first successful head-on collision with a broom-mounted Auror, sending him tumbling out of the sky.

As if on cue, the 2CV, in the only way it could, expressed its agreement with her assessment: the engine spluttered, wheezed, and died. 

Instantly an unholy torrent of verbal fury spewed from the dwarf’s mouth, only this time none of it in some obscure Latin variant. Still, the car plummeted through the atmosphere. She was done with our nonsense, poor thing.

It was quiet but for one of us raving and ranting. Mireille’s shield was still up, and in the absence of immaterial bullets to ward off, all it did was mask the sound of rushing air.

But that was never going to be the end, indeed even hurtling toward certain death, peace was denied me. I was curling up into a ball, hoping to cluster my remains for posterity, when it called to me. The new wand from Ollivander’s called out from where I’d forgotten it in my apron. There was no noise, but somehow that strange twig was able to nag until I squirmed in my seat. If only to free myself of that, I reached in for it, only to wince in pain as my fingers closed on burning hot wood. With a yelp I pulled out my hand and immediately let go, resorting to levitation rather than touch. “What do you want?” I muttered.

The wand was rotating as I made it fall at the same speed as the car. There was no strong force to slow its motion, yet it slowed. And as the clouds parted, so that the view beyond the windscreen was of the British countryside flying up to smack us in the face, the tip stilled pointing at the machine bolted onto the passenger-side airbag.

“Marie,” Roxanne was calmer, now that impact with the ground was visibly imminent, “I’m going to try and apparate us back to the flat. Hold tight...”

She reached for my arm but I held her back. “No,” I said, “You hold tight, both of you.” I grabbed the crooked wand, readying myself to ignore the heat, but the wood had cooled. Energy surged through me, the magic passing from goodness-knows-where into my arm, and funnelling out through my focus. I was winded, but as the breath was knocked out of me I managed to wrap a word around it. “Merde!” I shouted.

Whatever became of Mireille beyond that she didn’t perish, I have yet neglected to ask. The damned creature is infuriatingly self-effacing and always derails conversations by pointing out some service within her power and immediately doing it. As for me and Roxanne, we both lost consciousness.

It wasn’t instantaneous, at least for me. I was around long enough to perceive a blinding flash, and the unmistakeable sideways jolt as the transmat successfully shoved us past three-dimensional space. I felt the car shaking on the spot as the wheels suddenly met resistance, touching the ground once more. And I suffered the winking out of all the little spells Roxanne had placed upon me, herself and the inside of the vehicle. Gravity took hold on my bones and stomped on them, the air chilled as wind passed freely through the open windows, and worst of all, all of the grief my injuries should have given me during the fight came flooding in, no longer suppressed. From the pain I seized up, forgot to breathe, and passed out.

* * *

Four is how many times I was completely knocked out and lost to the world within a couple of days, including after the big transmat jump. I woke up seething. Again, I was in a comfy bed, again I was emerging from a battle outside my ability, and again I was in unfamiliar surroundings. As if to add insult to injury, whoever had rescued me this time had put me right up against the wall in a room with huge windows, while it was raining. The constant downpour of water passing through me only further soured my mood. I was grateful not to remember any dreams; unending immaterial irritation makes for the worst nightmares.

“Deep breaths,” I told myself, and started probing my surroundings. The place was rectangular, with a high arched ceiling. There was a big wooden double-door at the other end from me, and several other beds in the remaining space. Gentle nudging and pulling throughout the area revealed no other living beings. I was alone in the ward. However, I found a trolley right next to me, and there was no mistaking the shapes and textures of the objects sitting on it. The lower shelf had all my personal effects, clothes, magic wand, the ID card that would have served at the Lab, and even the disassembled remains of Healer Mallard’s cage.

I sprang up and thin layers of fabric ruffled on my bare skin. The only covering beside the bed sheets was a white gown of sorts, which drooped from my shoulders as soon as I rose.

One of the doors opened and a woman of average height slipped in. She lingered there, met my eye, and smiled at me. I opened my mouth to speak, but she vanished again, the door giving a gentle thud just as a word choked in my throat.

“Damn,” I croaked, and dropped on my back again, only to shift and prop myself up against the pillow immediately. The nurse – there was no doubt she was one – had worn a very old fashioned uniform, with the apron, peaked cap and all. That and the choice of location for the ward made it clear I was among  the wizards. Nobody with any sense would bung a hospital wing in what was very clearly a massive stone building, possibly a castle, not unless they had some convenient means of waving away the heating and hygiene problems, like magic.

The nurse didn’t return for several minutes, and soon my patience thinned. My thoughts were muddied with frustration. I wanted to clothe myself, and walk out, get away from the crazies before they had a chance to hurt me again, get away, run all the way back to France and stay by my old goose. When I saw that would certainly fail, it became tempting to see if I could muster the strength and concentration to simply open the double doors as a show of recovery, but even that would be too rash. Even if this were Hogwarts whose staff Roxanne expected to favour me it would not do to flaunt my mutant deviance. So I cleared my throat and called out.

“Nurse?”

I waited but there was no response. I was almost ready to just get out of bed and walk to it, but still held back. If I was considered a patient, and my doctors were to any degree competent, that couldn’t go down well. I shouted once more.

“Nurse!”

Both doors opened and the nurse came in, making straight for me. Her smile would have been soothing, were it not spoiled by the dark shape looming over her from behind, and who she was plainly struggling to stay ahead of. The shape was a man.

He wore black, all black, from head to foot. The hair was black, and greasy. His face betrayed a ragged, broken youth; he couldn’t be past his thirties. And yet the pull and lines of age ran deep in the flesh. All my attention went to him the moment he was in the room.

“No closer, please,” I said, and pushed against his chest. He halted, one leg briefly flailing useless in front of him as his body slammed into a hard nothingness.

As the man settled a solid ten feet away I pondered my action. The nurse had frozen on the spot in surprise, and now both newcomers were staring at me. Healer Mallard repulsed me, like some scrawny raptor extending its talons toward me. But at least, while conscious in his presence, I had used mere words to keep him at bay. I tolerated the thought of him acting upon me because I trusted Françoise’s judgement. Roxanne’s following actions toward me, although we ended up in disastrous situations, didn’t give me cause to doubt that judgement. Now it was beyond me. I couldn’t let the shape approach me. He was too cold and tired and sad. When you get good at spotting broken people, it only gets harder to spend time with them, even if you have to, even if it earns your keep. I held fast my blocking shield, and met his eyes.

The man cocked his head to one side, and took a step back, letting me push him away. He stared at me, and thoughts of recognition nagged at me from the side, but I couldn’t summon their message from the fog. “I will not approach you,” said the shape.

The doors burst open again and my failing reflexions retreated completely. A crowd of people barged in and billowed in my direction, headed by one very tall man.

“Monsieur Malingrey..!” the matron started, whirling around to face the leading intruder, but he easily silenced her. Few can take on the stare of two pale blue eyes the size of tennis balls, especially when he’s a bit cross.

Geoffrey came all the way to my bedside and reached for my hand, which I gladly let him take. Having the boss personally come to rescue you is a wild dream for most of us.

“It’s good to see you,” he said, ignoring the crowd gathering around us, “And there’s hope for Françoise, based on the Brits’ goodwill towards us. I got permission to summon the Breakers to accompany me. Top brass even let the new boy who messed up the other day come along. You’re safe. We’re safe. There’ll be no more crazy assassination attempts on one of mine while we’re around.”


	12. Chapter 12

Me and Antoine, a young man with ash coloured skin and yellow eyes, were waiting outside the hospital wing, surrounded by elementals. We were awaiting Geoffrey’s return. He’d insisted on following Mr. Snape to the Headmaster’s office when Madam Pomfrey managed to shoo them both from my bedside. Present company couldn’t tell me what was brewing.

Within ten minutes Antoine had to help me stand. Perhaps the matron was right when she protested my discharge. A full dose of Snape’s healing potion kept me in a deep sleep through the night. That morning’s heavily diluted solution was so potent that even my telekinesis was stifled. My limbs were numb and I could barely sense the others around me even though they huddled close.

Aurors had come to Hogwarts, hot on my trail, in the small hours. Geoffrey had already been there, having somehow tracked me faster. But on his own he’d only managed to dissuade them from taking me. Roxanne was gone. If anything more happened that could depend on my testimony, no drug would keep me out of it a second time. So I hung from Antoine’s shoulders and put faith in our guards.

There were four Breakers, or four who the boss hadn’t asked to conceal themselves. I knew three of them from school, Guillaume, Émeric and Agathe. They wore their mutations and injuries on the outside, and proudly. I have yet to see them in but the bare minimum of clothing. Why wear fragile cloth if only to burn it, soak it through, or have it ruined when limbs are lost? The stranger was an outlier in that regard. She appeared to be made of stone, but was still fully dressed up. You’d hardly notice anything strange but for dust clouds billowing from where there was friction between fabric and skin.

Only Snape returned. He wanted us to follow him. This did not go down well with the elementals, although the stone lady was more restrained. She was the one to ask after Geoffrey’s whereabouts, but hung back when the others stepped forward to display their discontent. Guillaume and Émeric visibly grew hotter, letting stray flames dance from their shoulders. Agathe started steaming from head to foot, even though most of her limbs were metal. I don’t know whether the bat was impressed, but he admitted to hastily leaving a conversation between the Headmaster and Geoffrey without warning. Then he turned on his heel and set off.

“Come on, let’s just go,” I said.

We trekked through the halls and passages of the castle, and it gleefully betrayed its magical nature. There were moving staircases, animated portraits, and clashing architectural styles. Even with a horrible sense of direction you would know the layout itself was magical: our path could not possibly fit in three dimensions.

Disoriented several times in a row, we halted in a large corridor. At first it appeared not to have much particularly fancy. Light was coming in through a huge arched window at the far end, and the stone around us was quite bare of any mad portraits. But Antoine spotted the one oddity, and helped me turn towards it: a huge tapestry. The image was static, which made a sober break from all the other decorations, but the subject easily made up for it in surrealism. There was a group of twenty foot trolls, clubs in hand and stomping in a circle wearing frilly ballerina dresses. In the middle was a man in robes with a pointy hat, who was obviously to blame for the monsters’ blasphemous display. The sight was so bewildering that we completely missed the spectacle of a door spontaneously appearing in the wall opposite the picture.

“Nothing is going to surprise me anymore,” I said as we were ushered in.

Long before taking notice of those officially present to deal with me, the first thing I saw was a scowling face and a head full of bandages with a trilby sat on top. There was no mistaking that vengeful stare. It was the Auror who I’d knocked out with a gas bottle to the face back in St. Dizier. He was the only person standing of a group assembled around a table.

“You survived,” I called out to him.

“ _You_ survived!” he spat, and continued glaring. He only spared one fearful glance for my protectors as they entered beside me, and never dared look their way again.

The table was circular, but painted to divide its occupants into four groups. Geoffrey was already seated in the red quarter. Opposite, in the gray section, stood an old man with half-moon glasses, wearing sea-blue robes and some sort of kufi cap. He smiled at me through his beard, the only benevolent face in sight. Almost every other wizard at the table fixated me with repressed disgust, lips tight, holding in the urge to sneer. These four occupied the remaining blue and white subdivisions, in pairs.

Antoine released me into the empty seat beside the boss, Snape took his place by the Headmaster, and formalities got under way, naming all parties present. Three more or less separate magical entities were represented: Hogwarts by Dumbledore and his potions master, and the British and French Ministries of Magic, who’d both sent their chief Auror with support. The two Frenchmen were alike, both favouring dark leather coats and trilbies, so I struggled to memorize their titles correctly. It was easy to remember who was who on the other side. The woman with a trapezoid hat was obviously the wizarding police’s top brass, while Alastor Moody, sporting an artificial eye and almost enough scars to put Agathe to shame was her grunt.

The roll call ended. Dumbledore sat down, looking as wary as Snape’s potion made me feel. “Perhaps,” he started, “We should attempt to determine the facts of this case...”

“The first should be quite obvious,” one of the Frenchmen interrupted, “That we are all idiots at this table. What good can come of this meeting? There is no taming or curing an obscurus, so this woman’s fate is a foregone conclusion. And what of these monsters flanking her? Is this not an admission of guilt? Are these people any less unwilling to shift than we are?”

“I admit that I don’t care,” Geoffrey retorted, “I don’t care what your society thinks should be become of Marie Delamare. If it wasn’t plainly obvious that you have hundreds of innocent, ordinary people under your responsibility then I would gladly summon all the monsters that answer to me and loose them upon you. Your vocabulary is beyond my understanding, but I know enough of my employee’s mental and physical conditions to know your assumptions are simply wrong. What must come of this meeting is cooperation. We will act to maintain your secrecy if you help us clear up the mess that brought us together in the first place.”

Nobody spoke immediately after, but the rage was tangible in the air. Moody’s eye went crazy, looking in all possible directions independently from the other, as if frantically searching for any lurking hostile mutants. When it looked like the Frenchman was about to respond in sputtering abuse, Dumbledore broke the silence.

“What would you have us assist you with in return for your silence?” he asked. I forced myself to focus in spite of the potion. Even I didn’t know what Geoffrey was up to.

The boss leaned back in his chair, and briefly turned his eyes on me. Up close, their size and the way they sank in the orbits made his emaciated features look like a skull with skin. “Marie’s last assignment,” he said to the assembly, “It concerned a building which had been heavily altered after at least a decade of abandonment. Shortly after her visit, the entire family of the man who originally contacted the authorities thus leading to our getting the case were found dead.”

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this on Fanfiction.net under the moniker Count Jim 'tribbles' Moriarty. You can find it here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13307866/1/Evil-Space-Wizards


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